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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/worldspiritualsyOOsnow 



THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 



BV THE SAME AUTHOR 

Scenes and Sayings in the Life 
OF Christ. $1.50 

A Summer Across the Sea. $1.00 



THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL 
SYSTEM 

AN OUTLINE OF METAPHYSICS 



BY 



JAMES H. SNOWDEN, D.D., LL.D. 

FORMERLY ADJUNCT PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY AND 
ETHICS IN WASHINGTON AND JEFFERSON COLLEGE 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1910 

All rights reserved 



'■'=b« 



%£> 



Copyright, igio. 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published June, 1910, 



J. S. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



©aA265872 



Co 

ALEXANDER T. ORMOND, Ph.D., LL.D. 

PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 

IN APPRECIATION OF 

HIS DISTINGUISHED SERVICES IN PHILOSOPHY 

AND IN MEMORY OF 

DAYS OF DELIGHTFUL FELLOWSHIP ON THESE HIGH THEMES 

THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY 

DEDICATED 



PREFACE 

Metaphysics has been defined as " that, of which 
those who Usten understand nothing, and which he who 
speaks does not himself understand "; and a metaphysi- 
cian has been declared to be a " blind man looking on 
a dark night for a black cat that isn't there ! " These 
extreme statements probably represent the view many 
persons entertain of this field of thought. It appears to 
them to be a region of cloud and smoke, conflict and 
confusion, where men are blindly groping about and 
"ignorant armies clash by night." They hear the dis- 
tant din and occasionally see its dust, but are uncertain 
as to what it is all about, or whether it has any real 
meaning. 

This chaos, however, is more apparent than real, and 
it requires but slight acquaintance with metaphysics to 
see that it is a world of order and has an object in view; 
in fact, so far from being confusion worse confounded, 
metaphysics is distinctly an effort to escape intellectual 
confusion and reach a clear and consistent view of the 
world. It is probable that there are many persons, stu- 
dents, professional men, teachers, and general readers, 
that have given little special study to the subject, who 



viii PREFACE 

would be glad to be led into this world along an ele- 
mentary and plain path. It is in the hope of meeting 
this want that this book is offered to such readers. It 
does not attempt to cover the whole field, and scarcely 
touches some of its deeper problems, but it endeavors to 
give an outline of metaphysics from the idealistic point 
of view. It especially seeks to be constructive and work 
out a general theory of the world as a spiritual system. 
The popular aim of the book explains its elementary 
form, and its avoidance, as far as possible, of technical 
terms. 

The trend of metaphysics has long been in the direc- 
tion of idealism, but in recent years this system has 
assumed popular forms, true or perverted. It is now 
out on the street and in the air, and this creates an 
occasion for a plain exposition of the subject. The- 
ology is also being rewritten in the light of idealistic 
or monistic philosophy, and this book endeavors to 
apply idealism in the field of religion and life. Meta- 
physics must submit to the pragmatic test, and at this 
point idealism wins large vindication. 

The main object of this book, however, is not to make 
converts to the theory it presents. The metaphysician 
as a rule is chiefly intent on seeing and stating truth, 
and is less concerned in controversy and converts. He 
knows he can only catch his own glimpse of reality and 
that ultimate truth is infinitely wider and deeper than 
he can see; therefore, he strains his vision to discern 
what he can of the great world, and then is content to 



PREFACE ix 

make report of his quest and let others search and see 
for themselves. In the last result every one must be 
his own metaphysician, and we can do little more than 
present our varying views and get what help we can 
from one another. Yet while this book is idealistic, it 
endeavors to state other views impartially, and it may 
still serve as an introduction to the general subject. 

Washington, Pa. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



I. The Nature of Metaphysics 

1. The Definition of Metaphysics . 

2. The Method of Metaphysics 

3. The Assumptions of Metaphysics 

4. The Spirit and Object of Metaphysics 

5. Systems of Metaphysics 



II. 



III. 



IV. 



The World from Different Viewpoints 
I. The Plain Man's World 
-2. The Scientist's World 
3. The Metaphysician's World 

The Subjectivity of Sensation . 

1. The Physical View 

2. The Physiological View 

3. The Psychological View 

4. The Metaphysical View 

The Subjectivity of Space 

1. The Theory Explained 

2. Reasons of the Theory 



V. The Subjectivity of Time 

VI. Subjective Reality 

1. The Soul's Knowledge of Itself . 

2. The Fundamental Faculties of the Soul 

3. Objects of Experience 

4. General Characters of the Soul . 



PAGE 
I 
I 

5 

8 

12 

15 

20 
21 

25 
29 

36 
37 
38 
40 

44 

49 
50- 

52 

78 

84 
85- 
92 
95 
105 



VII. How We Reach Objective Reality 



XI 1 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 

VIII. The Nature of Objective Reality 

1. The World as Phenomenon 

2. The World as Mind in Man 

3. The World as Life 

4. The World as Thought 

5. The World as Sensibility . 

6. The World as Will . 

7. General Characters of the World 

8. Man the Key of the Universe 

IX. The World and God 

1. God Revealed in the World 

2. God as Cause of the World 

3. God and Man 

4. Summary of Idealism 

X. Applications of Idealism 



The Relation of Mind and Body 

Immortality 

The Problem of Evil . 

Idealism and Religion 

Idealism and Life 



PAGE 

120 
120 
121 
122 
131 
US 
162 

173 
177 

179 
179 
196 
205 
215 

225 
226 

233 
256 
289 
298 



Appendix : A Brief Course of Suggested Reading 



303 



In Him we live and move and have our being. 

— Paul. 

Take all in a word : the truth in God's breast 
Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed : 
Though he is so bright and we so dim, 
We are made in his image to witness him. 

— Browning. 

There is an inmost center in us all, 

Where truth abides in fullness ; and around, 

Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in. 

This perfect, clear perception — which is truth. 

A baffling and perverting carnal mesh 

Binds it, and makes all error : and, to know, 

Rather consists in opening out a way 

Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape, 

Than in effecting entry for a light 

Supposed to be without. Watch narrowly 

The demonstration of a truth, its birth, 

And you trace back the effluence to its spring 

And source within us ; where broods radiance vast, 

To be elicited ray by ray. 

— Browning. 

Dark is the world to thee : thyself art the reason why; 

For is He not all but that which has power to feel ' I am I ' ? 

Speak to Him thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet- 
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet. 

— Tennyson. 
Our little systems have their day ; 

They have their day and cease to be : 
They are but broken lights of thee. 
And thou, O Lord, art more than they. 

Let knowledge grow from more to more, 
But more of reverence in us dwell ; 
That mind and soul, according well, 

May make one music as before, 

But vaster. 

— Tennyson. 



THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL 
SYSTEM 

CHAPTER I 

THE NATURE OF METAPHYSICS 

I. The Definition of Metaphysics 

Metaphysics is the science of being. To understand 
this definition, which compresses a vast system of thought 
into a single, short sentence, we must unfold its meaning. 
There are many sciences which deal with limited areas or 
aspects of being, each special science investigating and 
systematizing the facts and laws of its own field. Thus 
astronomy studies the heavenly bodies, determining their 
sizes, distances, orbits, motions, weights, temperature, 
and composition, with a glance backward into their origin 
and forward into their destiny. At the other extreme, 
molecular physics studies molecules and atoms, endeavor- 
ing to measure these minute masses and to resolve the 
atoms into swarms of electrons and possibly to dissolve 
the electrons into ether whirls or centers of electricity 
or energy. In a similar way, botany studies plants, and 
zoology studies animals. Biology strikes deeper and 
enters the region of life as it is exhibited in both plants 

B 1 



2 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

and animals. Psychology goes deeper still, and pene- 
trates the world of mind as it is found in man, seeking 
accurately to ascertain and analyze mental facts and to 
derive their laws. Ethics studies the special field of 
mental life manifested in moral character and conduct. 
Theology studies God, seeking to discover the nature of 
his being and his relations to man, especially in the 
practical field of religion. Thus each of the hundred 
or more sciences investigates its own field. Yet while 
no science attempts to go outside its proper limits, all 
sciences overlap one another at their mutual boundaries, 
and are together interrelated and form one continuous 
and harmonious system of truth. 

Some of these sciences include several kindred fields 
or subordinate sciences. Thus physics investigates matter 
in the mass, whether the mass be an astronomical sun 
or a chemical atom. Biology studies life in all its myriad 
forms, and thus freely crosses the line between botany 
and zoology ; it is concerned with the principles that are 
common to both these fields. Psychology, while it is 
primarily concerned with mental life, yet cannot keep 
from invading the body and studying the interrelations 
of the two widely distinct fields of mind and matter. 
Sociology, with its shadowy outlines and vague contents, 
endeavors to grasp a wide field of diverse facts embraced 
within economics, ethics, politics, sanitation, and other 
sciences, and is thus concerned with the structural ele- 
ments of society and the principles that are common 
to these many subordinate sciences. Theology has an 



THE NATURE OF METAPHYSICS 3 

immensely wide reach, endeavoring to lay hold of the 
nature of God and of man in themselves and in their 
mutual relations. 

It will be observed that the wider the field of a science 
is, the fewer are its specific facts and principles ; the 
more extensive it is, the less intensive it is. Botany has a 
narrower but a richer field than biology, for all the vital 
facts within its field belong to it, whereas biology is con- 
cerned only with those that are common to botany and 
zoology. As a science rises above and includes within 
its range several sciences, it leaves behind it all but that 
which is common to them ; and, therefore, the wider the 
circle it covers, the less rich it is in details and the more 
it is reduced to general principles. At last it may be- 
come only a skeleton of principle denuded of all flesh. 

This principle carried to its logical limit gives us 
metaphysics. Metaphysics is the universal science 
which seeks to grasp the whole field of being, the com- 
mon ground of all the special sciences. As biology 
takes the many elements of botany and the many ele- 
ments of zoology and picks out the relatively few that 
are common to both and drops all others out of view, so 
metaphysics endeavors to dissect out the few principles 
or the one principle that is common to all fields. It 
proceeds on the assumption that there is one mode, or, 
at most, two or several modes, of being back of all the 
myriad forms of reality which we see in the world ; and 
its grand endeavor is to penetrate to this ultimate prin- 
ciple and discover its nature and laws ; to rise above all 



4 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

specific differences in the sciences and construct one 
comprehensive science. 

Metaphysics thus has no boundary lines such as limit 
the special sciences. Wherever reality manifests itself, 
there lies its field. It sends out a decree that all the 
world shall be taxed in its interest. Yet it is not 
primarily concerned with the wealth of details that con- 
stitute the richness of a specific field of fact, but only 
with the underlying skeleton of principle that is its 
framework in common with all other fields. In particu- 
lar, metaphysics crosses that deepest line of division 
that cleaves the world, the gulf between mind and 
matter. These two fields that seem so widely sundered 
belong equally to its domain, and its chief concern is to 
determine their mutual relations, and especially to dis- 
cover whether they are really diverse or are only two 
aspects or modes of the same fundamental reality. 
Since the Creator falls within the field of being as truly 
as any creature, metaphysics includes God in its view 
and endeavors to reach his nature and his relations to 
the whole of being. In accordance with the principle 
that the wider the field of a science is, the fewer are its 
elements, metaphysics has the least wealth of detail and 
is reduced to the barest skeleton of being. When it 
finds one principle or element that underlies and explains 
the universe, it attains its goal.^ 

1 Philosophy is the general science of ultimate principles, and divides 
into the two branches of epistemology, which investigates the nature and 
validity of knowledge, and of metaphysics, which investigates the nature of 
ultimate reality. 



THE NATURE OF METAPHYSICS 5 

But having reached this goal of a unitary principle or 
germ of ultimate reality, the metaphysician at once pro- 
ceeds to evolve it again into the universe. He is not 
content with a metaphysical skeleton, but reclothes it 
with flesh and blood and makes his world full-rounded 
and warm with life : only his new world is now recon- 
structed on metaphysical lines and his central luminous 
principle is 'the master light of all his seeing.' 

2. The Method of Metaphysics 

The search for truth is not a haphazard adventure, 
but a systematic process. The several sciences, therefore, 
for carrying on their investigations have various rules, 
methods, and instruments, which experience has devised 
and found necessary and efficient for the best work. 
Some sciences, such as astronomy and chemistry, have an 
elaborate outfit of instruments, and others, such as math- 
ematics, have a complicated system of technical terms 
and symbols. The fundamental methods of all sciences, 
however, are the same. These are the mental processes 
involved in reaching reality in any field, such as accurate 
observation, trained judgment, correct reasoning, con- 
structive imagination, and experimental test and proof. 
When these operations are properly conducted, the truth 
is likely to be attained, though the regulative rules and 
instrumental helps may be few or imperfect. But if the 
mental processes are loose and illogical, the whole struc- 
ture reared on them may be unsound, though it may 
present an imposing appearance of learned research. 



6 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

Metaphysics has no observatory or laboratory, no in- 
struments and few rules. It carries on its work almost 
wholly by mental processes ; its workshop is within the 
mind. It does not follow from this, however, that it has 
no method and is loose and lawless in its ways of work- 
ing. It is sometimes thought that metaphysics is not a 
true science, but is simply a subjective maze and mist of 
individual speculations without principle or system ; that 
every metaphysician spins his own web out of his own 
brain according to his own wild will. This is a mistake. 
Metaphysics, like any other science, is an attempt to 
systematize our knowledge of a certain field ; to clear it 
of errors and to clarify and arrange our conceptions of 
it so that they will reflect and fit reality; and so far from 
being loose and vague in its methods, it seeks to reason 
with the greatest care and rigor, to question and cross- 
question every fact and theory with the most painstaking 
thoroughness and pitiless impartiality, and to spare no 
assumption or prejudice or appearance, however self- 
evident it may claim to be or however it may be sup- 
ported by authority or consecrated by tradition. It has 
therefore been defined by Professor William James as 
simply " an unusually obstinate attempt to think clearly 
and consistently." Metaphysics has a passion for truth, 
and its one fundamental method is the most strenuous 
reasoning. 

This reasoning, however, is not carried on in a secret 
chamber of the mind or up in the air, remote from the 
reasonings and experiences of everyday life. The meta- 



THE NATURE OF METAPHYSICS 7 

physician is sometimes looked upon as a kind of mental 
wizard who is practicing some hidden art, and the very 
name to some people has an uncanny sound. But the 
philosopher has the same faculties as other men, and has 
no magic or patented process for reaching truth. His 
logical operations are the same as those used not only in 
other sciences, but in politics and business and all the af- 
fairs of life ; in fact, the metaphysician does not differ in 
his logic from " the man on the street," except that he is 
more careful. All his reasonings are carried on out in the 
open where they can be seen and known of all men. The 
constant test of metaphysics is experience, the common 
experience of the world. In fact, as we shall see, ex- 
perience is the very stuff it handles and is endeavoring 
to systematize and explain. And every kind of experi- 
ence is given a voice in shaping this explanation, whether 
of mind or heart, body or world, soul or society. The 
metaphysician exclaims, with the Roman actor, " I am a 
man, and nothing pertaining to man is foreign to me." 
He has been charged with excessive intellectualism as 
though his interpretation of reality were purely the ab- 
stract output of a cold logical machine, but he is deeply 
immersed in the world, and his results are the full-orbed 
expression of his total experience. 

There is one method or instrument of investigation in 
metaphysics so important as to deserve special mention. 
This is the method of self-consistency, or its opposite, 
contradiction. Metaphysics assumes, as we shall see, 
the unity and harrnony of all truth. Coherence in the 



8 ' THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

results of our thinking is therefore a mark of sound logic, 
and inconsistency is infallible proof of error. The meta- 
physician never stops with an assumption or principle 
until he has traced it through all its consequences to its 
final end; and if at any point it fails to fit in nicely and 
smoothly with accepted knowledge, he experiences a jar 
that warns him the delicate organism of truth is out of 
gear or balance, and he hastens to search for and correct 
the maladjustment. Metaphysics abhors a contradiction, 
as it used to be said that nature abhors a vacuum, and it 
cannot rest until it has wrought truth out into a universal 
and harmonious system. 

3. The Assumptions of Metaphysics 

Every science starts with a large stock of assump- 
tions. It can investigate and establish only the facts 
and principles contained in its own limited field and 
must assume the generally accepted results of other 
fields. Geology accepts and uses the results of physics, 
chemistry, biology, and other sciences. Ethics accepts 
the results of psychology, psychology accepts physiol- 
ogy, physiology accepts chemistry, chemistry accepts 
physics, and thus every science is built upon foundations 
of faith. The proved principles of one science become 
the assumptions of the next. 

Metaphysics as the universal science in one sense 
starts with the largest stock of assumptions, as it accepts 
and uses the results of all other sciences. But in an- 
other sense it starts with the fewest assumptions, for its 



THE NATURE OF METAPHYSICS 9 

aim is to reach the ultimate principles of reality, and 
therefore it must sift and search the postulates of all 
other sciences and have as few as possible of its own. 
Assumptions are its dislike, if not its abhorrence, and 
if possible it would have none of them. This, however, 
cannot be. Human reasoning is a process that always 
begins in the middle of things, because it can never get 
back of its own first principles. It must have something 
to stand on before it can take its first step, and to re- 
nounce all assumptions would be to cut the ground from 
under its own feet. An assumption is an act of faith 
rather than of logic, and trust is older than reason in 
human experience, as in the evolution of life the heart 
is older than the brain. We must trust something be- 
fore we can know anything, and the metaphysician can- 
not escape this necessity. He, too, is a man of faith 
and must walk by faith, at least in the first steps of his 
metaphysical journey. Nevertheless, he does well to 
be as sparing and skeptical of assumptions as he can. 
It is his business to be suspicious of them and to " prove 
the spirits, whether they are of " the truth, " because 
many false " assumptions "are gone out into the world." 
Rigorous reasoning is his method, and everything must 
submit to the severest search and test. 

Yet there are a few principles that the metaphysician 
must assume, for without them he cannot even begin to 
reason. In common with all other men he sees and 
accepts the axioms of mathematics as self-evident truths. 
That things equal to the same thing are equal to one 



lO THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

another, that a finite whole is greater than any of its parts, 
and so on, are found in the metaphysician's stock of 
assumptions. These things cannot be proved in the 
sense that they can be analyzed and demonstrated by a 
process of reasoning, for they are immediately perceived 
as unanalyzable truths, and no reasoning about them 
can make them any clearer or more certain. Of a simi- 
lar nature is the principle that every change of being 
must have a cause. While all our experience confirms 
this, yet it is not derived from experience, but is a logical 
necessity of thought. We cannot think it away, or con- 
ceive a change without thinking of it as being effected 
by some cause. Mental changes are quite as subject 
to this principle as physical changes, and it is a univer- 
sal law of being. If there were no such law, there could 
be no order in the system of being, and all science 
would be impossible. 

There are two other assumptions of metaphysics that 
are of special importance. One is the trustworthiness 
of our mental faculties and processes. The human 
mind is constituted to know truth and to discover truth. 
Of course it is subject in all its processes to error, as the 
swarms of errors that have attended all its thinking 
abundantly prove. But it can test its processes, con- 
stantly compare its results with experience, clear itself 
of errors, and thus ever approximate more closely to 
reaHty. The attempt to reach the truth is often a long 
and hard battle, but it is a battle that can be won. It may 
not be the absolute truth that is reached, it may be rela- 



THE NATURE OF METAPHYSICS II 

tive to our faculties, it may be truth seen through a glass 
darkly, but still it is truth. This principle, then, must 
be assumed in the beginning of all our reasoning : with- 
out this assumption we could not prove or disprove 
anything, for all our results would be vitiated by the 
constitutional untrustworthiness of the mind itself. 

The other important assumption is the unity and har- 
mony of all reality. Being breaks into infinite variety, 
yet amidst all its varied forms it maintains its own inner 
cohesion and harmony. However diverse and appar- 
ently antagonistic its manifestations are, we must believe 
that they all fit together with absolute nicety and that 
there are nowhere any faults or gaps, any misfit joints 
or open seams, that would break or mar the perfect con- 
tinuity and harmony of the system. However persistent 
and pugnacious, formidable and alarming the appear- 
ances, there must be no real contradiction or inconsist- 
ency in the realm of being. All its radii must run to the 
same center, all its manifold manifestations must melt 
into one unity. Now we cannot prove this, certainly we 
cannot wait to prove it before we begin our reasonings, 
perhaps we never can prove it. And yet we must assume 
it, for without such assumption all science again be- 
comes impossible. Science is simply a transcript of the 
order that reigns in the realm of being, and if there be 
no such order, there can be no science. Our progress 
in the growth of knowledge may confirm this assump- 
tion of the unity of truth, but we must start with it as a 
postulate, and may never reach the point where this 



12 THE^ WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

faith becomes knowledge. Yet faith is not necessarily 
a weaker kind of belief than reasoned knowledge, but 
may be the surest of our convictions. 

And so metaphysics is built on trust, and its first word 
is faith. But having accepted these few, primal, nec- 
essary assumptions of thought, it suddenly grows skep- 
tical and refuses to accept any more. Having taken 
these first steps by faith, it henceforth walks by sight. 

4. The Spirit and Object of Metaphysics 

The spirit in which and the object for which a science 
is prosecuted are important matters. Metaphysics should 
first of all conduct its reasonings in a truth-loving, 
truth-seeking spirit. This spirit should characterize 
all science, but it should especially mark metaphysics. 
Its aim is to reach ultimate truth, and its only hope of 
success is to clear its eyes of all prejudice and passion 
and look with unclouded vision. It should therefore be 
very honest and candid, patient and persistent, in its 
search, with an eye single for the truth. Tradition and 
authority can have little place in its processes. Preju- 
dice and partisanship should play no part in its inquiries, 
and its one pursuit and passion should be to reach 
reality. 

And, therefore, the metaphysician may well be char- 
acterized by the spirit of humility. Presumption and 
pride incapacitate him for that calm and clear thought 
that is his only means of seeing truth. Dogmatism, 
offensive in all men, is especially and unpardonably 



THE NATURE OF METAPHYSICS 13 

obnoxious in him. Occasionally there has been a meta- 
physician, like Schopenhauer, who has been obsessed 
of a high and mighty dogmatism that would settle all 
the problems of the universe by its own ipse dixit and 
then would ruthlessly impose its decrees on all men. 
Such a spirit is not likely to find the truth, for it is so 
possessed of its own preconceived opinions that it is 
blind to everything else. When the light that is in the 
metaphysician is darkness, how great is that darkness ! 
Truth loves to dwell in a humble heart, and a cautious 
and candid mind is more likely to find it In attempting 
to walk the dizzy heights of metaphysical speculation, 
we need to walk humbly and take heed lest we fall. At 
best we can know only in part, and we must not assume 
that we do or can know all. The true metaphysician has 
little of the aggressive spirit and is not anxious to make 
converts. It is enough for him to go out into the wilder- 
ness of speculation and endeavor to catch some glimpse 
of reality for himself. On coming back he is willirig to 
make report of what he has seen, but he does not wish^- 
others to accept his report on his authority ; at most he 
only desires to disclose the vision that has illuminated 
the world for him, and his invitation is. Come and see. 

The object of metaphysics is doubtless a puzzle to 
many minds. The practical man judges things by their 
practical results, and at the end of every enterprise or 
adventure he looks for material profit. It must be con- 
fessed that, judged by this standard, metaphysics has 
nothing to show. It never invents a magic machine, 



14 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

discovers a new mine of wealth, or affects the price of 
stocks in the market. Yet it may have all the higher 
aim and be worth all the more because it rises above 
these things. Man's life consisteth not in the abundance 
of the things which he possesseth ; his real life is found, 
not in outer, but in inner, wealth. Even physical science 
is most worthy of our esteem and is most successful 
when it is dissociated from any thought of gain and seeks 
truth for its own sake. The most splendid discoveries 
of science, even those which afterward have showered 
the greatest and most abundant material blessings on 
the world, have been the work of men who, like Agassiz, 
had " no time to make money." It is one of the noblest 
impulses of the soul that impels it to know and to set no 
bounds to its knowing ; to seek truth for its own sake, 
with no desire or thought of material reward. This dis- 
interested love of truth reaches its purest and intensest 
degree in metaphysics, which is at the farthest possible 
remove from the manufactory and the market, and is 
closest to the sun of truth and the stars of eternity. 

But even from the practical point of view, metaphysics 
is not without justification. Every instinct points to 
some deep need. The soul has an instinct for knowl- 
edge that cannot rest or be satisfied until it has strained 
itself to the utmost to pierce the mystery of existence ; 
and all such knowledge fits and arms it for better living. 
Any truth once acquired is so much fine capital added 
to the soul's wealth ; is so much expansion and enrich- 
ment of the soul's life ; is a higher level whence it 



THE NATURE OF METAPHYSICS 1 5 

can look out upon a wider horizon and climb to still 
loftier summits. Metaphysical speculation, in so far as 
it reaches truth, takes the soul so much nearer the 
center and total significance of all reality, and thereby 
brings the largest and richest enhancement to its wealth, 
lifts it to the highest peak, and gives it the broadest and 
most splendid view of the world. Metaphysics feeds 
faith and shows it that life is something rich and grand 
and infinitely worth living. While it is true that phi- 
losophy has in some instances reached skeptical results 
and bred a pessimistic spirit, yet its general history has 
been that it has laid foundations on which to build a 
solid structure of life, reared altars of faith and worship, 
and shed an optimistic brightness over the world. The 
human mind would prove itself unworthy of its great 
powers if it did not attempt to climb the loftiest Alp of 
thought, and the world would have been less rich and 
strong if metaphysics had not come to attempt this 
achievement. And as the Alps send down streams to 
irrigate the plain and make it bloom and bear fine fruit 
and even plant cities at their feet, so metaphysical truth 
comes down to fertilize all the fields of the world. 
Every thought we reach on these high summits will 
help to shape and color all the practical affairs and even 
the most trivial details of life. 

5. Systems of Metaphysics 

Before entering the land of metaphysical speculation 
it may be well to take a general look at its map and get 



l6 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

a view of its main mountain ranges and peaks. Meta- 
physics is popularly supposed to be a labyrinthine maze 
of mysteries in which one may wander and get hope- 
lessly lost, but it really admits of simple classification 
that will enable us to know the general region of thought 
through which we shall move. 

The deepest distinction the metaphysician encounters 
is that between mind and matter. These are the two 
outstanding mountain ranges or peaks that always meet 
his view ; and more than anything else his speculations 
are attempts to solve the problem of the relations of 
these two modes of reality. It results from this that 
any metaphysical theory has its nature determined and 
is classified by its attitude towards, or its solution of, this 
problem. These two forms of being may be viewed as 
the two foci around which sweep the curves of all meta- 
physical thinking. 

In their relations to this problem, all metaphysics may 
be reduced to two great systems, the dualistic and the 
monistic. 

(i) The dualistic system of metaphysics regards 
mind and matter as two irreducible forms of being. 
Neither can be resolved into the other, but both must 
be bound up together in one system. Matter remains 
external to mind as an extended and insensate reality, 
forming a kind of framework for mind, the backbone 
and skeleton of the universe ; and mind, though unex- 
tended and sensible, holds relations with matter, and 
knows it as its object and uses it as its instrument. 



THE NATURE OF METAPHYSICS 1 7 

Dualism assumes many forms, but the irreducible reality 
of both mind and matter is its essential principle. 

(2) The monistic system of metaphysics merges the 
two focal points of mind and matter into one center or 
substance, which becomes the reality back of all the 
manifestations of being. One or the other of these two 
focal points may absorb the other and become the 
center, or both may be viewed as manifestations of some 
deeper unitary reality, and thus monism divides into 
three branches. If matter absorbs mind so that mind 
is only a manifestation of matter, we have materialism. 
If mind absorbs matter so that matter is only a mani- 
festation of mind, we have idealism. 

The name " idealism " for this system of metaphysics 
is somewhat unfortunate and misleading, as ideas are 
only one activity of mind. " Spiritualism," which has 
been used in this sense, is also objectionable. Some 
idealists now use the term " personal idealism," and 
others use the term "personalism." President A. H. 
Strong has adopted the name " ethical monism," and 
" personal monism " suggests itself as an admirable 
descriptive and distinctive name. However, "idealism" 
is the historical name for this system and is likely to 
hold the ground. 

The third form of monism makes both mind and 
matter manifestations of some deeper but unknown 
and unknowable reality, which underlies both as their 
common cause. Those who hold this view are some- 
times called " monists," />ar excellence, in contrast with 
c 



1 8 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

materialists and idealists, and they may be properly 
denominated agnostic monists. 

The materialist says that nothing exists but matter, 
and that all things that seem else are its manifestations ; 
the idealist, reversing this, says that nothing exists but 
mind, and that all things that seem else are its manifes- 
tations ; the agnostic monist says that there is one uni- 
tary substance or form of being which manifests itself 
in both mind and matter and is otherwise unknown and 
unknowable. The tendency, however, of the agnostic 
monist is to relapse into either materialism or idealism, 
regarding the one or the other of these forms of being 
as the fundamental reality. When a monist believes 
the ultimate reality is unknowable, he is an agnostic; 
when he believes it is matter, he is a materialist and an 
atheist; when he believes it is impersonal, he is a pan- 
theist ; and when he believes it is personal, he is a 
theist. 

It must be admitted that monism has been more 
attractive to the metaphysical mind than dualism. The 
large majority of the master metaphysicians have been 
monists of one or another type. Aside from the ques- 
tion of evidence, a preliminary reason for this may be 
found in the tendency in the human mind to reduce the 
manifold manifestations of being to as few forms as 
possible. The growth of knowledge consists in reduc- 
ing things to fewer and fewer classes or kinds ; the 
logical end of this process is one kind, unitary being. 
Monism may be said to start with the advantage of 



THE NATURE OF METAPHYSICS 1 9 

satisfying this unifying principle and instinct of the 
mind ; it leaps to the logical end and completion of all 
knowledge when it finds one ultimate reality. Even the 
dualist feels this powerful attraction towards monism, 
and he tends to gravitate towards the one or the other 
of his two foci. He is trying to stand on two stools 
and is in constant danger of slipping and falling the one 
v\^ay or the other. Yet we must not give weight to this 
presumption in favor of monism, and must beware of 
turning it into an assumption. The question of the 
truth of dualism or of monism is to be determined, and 
we must give each of these two theories an equal chance 
to make good its claim. No prejudice or presumption 
must be allov>fed to throw a weight into either scale, and 
onlvthc tnuh must be allowed to determine the issue. 



CHAPTER II 

THE WORLD FROM DIFFERENT VIEWPOINTS 

Every one sees his own world. Out of the infinite, 
manifold mass of reality that lies around us and sends 
complex streams of influence in upon us, each one selects 
his own materials and constructs his own universe. Four 
men stand and look out over a landscape. The first is 
a farmer, and his eye takes in the lay of the land and 
the quahties of the soil, and he puts it down as worth so 
much an acre. The second is a lumberman, and his eye 
lights on the forests and picks out the different kinds of 
wood and estimates their quantity and quality, and he 
puts it down as worth so much a thousand feet. The 
third is an engineer, and unconsciously he begins to trace 
lines of elevation and to make cuts and drive tunnels, and 
presently he sees a railway train rushing across the scene. 
The fourth is a painter, and he sees foreground and back- 
ground, a picturesque combination of forest and field and 
stream, and over it all a flood of many colored splendor, 
and he reaches for his brush to catch the scene on canvas. 
So every one carves out his own universe and sees his own 
world. He can see only what his eye is fitted to see, 
what his nature and training let him see. Yet each 
one's world is true and good for him, and is not incon- 
sistent with the truth and goodness of other men's worlds. 



THE WORLD FROM DIFFERENT VIEWPOINTS 21 

This simple illustration may prepare the way for 
deeper distinctions, worlds more widely and startlingly 
separated. Let us set three men to looking at this land- 
scape and note what they see. These three men are a 
plain man, a scientist, and a metaphysician. 

I. The Plain Man's World 

The " plain man," also known as the " naive " and the 
" unreflective " man, is a character that frequently ap- 
pears on the pages of the metaphysician, and sometimes he 
seems to be viewed by the thinker with no small amuse- 
ment. However, the terms "plain," "naive," and "un- 
refiective " as applied to this worthy person are used in 
no offensive sense. They are not at all used in the sense 
of ignorant, unintelligent, bigoted, or dull. The plain, 
naifve, unreflective man may be one of general intelligence 
and even of high education along some lines. The dis- 
tinguishing mark of this man is that he lives in the 
phenomenal world, or in the world of appearances. He 
believes that things exist objectively in extension just as 
they appear subjectively to him, and he may not know 
or suspect the true nature of these realities. Of course 
he knows there are such things as appearances and de- 
ceptions, and he has found some of them out. He knows 
that "all is not gold that glitters," that the angle in the 
stick at the point it leaves the water is an appearance, 
that all the senses are subject to illusion, and he may be 
remarkably keen and skillful in detecting deceptions in 
practical affairs. Nevertheless, he takes the world of 



22 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

things as being what it seems, and may not have so much 
as heard of a noumenal as distinguished from a phe- 
nomenal world. 

Let this plain man look at the landscape, and what 
does he see ? He first sees it as part of the general solar 
system, and he may think that this system is in its motions 
what it seems. Now the sun appears to move around 
the earth. The plain man sees it descend over that land- 
scape down behind the western hills as clearly and in- 
dubitably as he ever sees anything in this world. There 
is nothing in the whole field of the senses that at first sight 
seems more certain than the movement of the sun across 
the sky. 

But perhaps our plain man, as he may be an intelli- 
gent and educated man, may be shocked and insulted at 
the suggestion that he holds any such view. Very likely; 
but if so, it is because he has so far ceased to be a " plain " 
man ; he has at this point got out of and beyond the 
world of appearances. Yet the time was when all men, 
including even the scientists, believed in this appearance 
as the reality. For a long time after the scientists had 
changed their view on this point, the plain people held 
to the traditional belief. Some plain people in enlight- 
ened lands still hold this view, and occasionally there 
may be even a man of some education that believes the 
sun revolves around the earth. As for the world in 
general, probably the majority of human beings believe 
in this motion, and would triumphantly point to the 
moving sun in proof of it. 



THE WORLD FROM DIFFERENT VIEWPOINTS 23 

It is true that this apparent motion of the sun is not 
an appearance or phenomenon in the deeper sense in 
which the metaphysician regards color and sound as phe- 
nomena or appearances, as we shall presently see. But 
it belongs to the general class of appearances, and serves 
to illustrate the deeper kind. We may, therefore, with 
these explanations, include this appearance in the plain 
man's world. It logically belongs there, though many 
plain men have outgrown it. 

Returning to the landscape, we note again what the 
plain man sees. He sees a spread-out extent of surface, 
composed of rock and soil, field and forest, overarched 
with sky and flooded with a sea of light ; he sees all 
things variously colored blue and green and gold ; he 
hears the songs of birds and the roll of distant thunder ; 
and various odors effect his sense of smell gratefully or 
offensively. He picks up a pebble and it looks solid and 
feels hard ; he strikes a telegraph wire and it gives forth 
a musical sound ; he eats an apple and it tastes sweet ; 
he crushes some pine leaves in his hand and they emit 
a pungent odor. These things affect the senses of the 
plain man just as they do those of the scientist and the 
metaphysician. His eyes and ears and all his senses 
may be as good as theirs. But he believes that all these 
things exist in objective reality just as they appear to 
him. He thinks that scene is spread out in extension ; 
that it is all bright with light out there ; that the colors 
are out there on the grass and in the sky just as he sees 
them ; that the sound is in the air and the odor is the 



24 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

crushed pine leaves ; he thinks the pebble is solid with- 
out any break or gap in the continuity of its substance, 
and that the thunder is over the hill where he hears it. 
The plain man has great confidence in what he sees and 
hears and feels, and is sure that the landscape exists as 
his senses report it to him. 

We must have respect for the plain man's view. In 
fact, so far as his world goes, he is right. This world 
of appearance works in practice. The plain man lives 
in it and does business with it ; he trusts it at all points 
and feels it is as true as the stars. Just as soon, he be- 
lieves, could the sun drop out of the sky as could this 
world of appearances play him false. So far, he is right, 
impregnably right. This world of appearances is true 
and good and to be trusted with unwavering faith. We 
all do and must live in it and do business with it. We 
cannot take a step or draw a breath without doing this. 
The world of appearances is the world of all men in 
which we live and move and have our being, and so far 
we are all plain men. 

The difference at this point is that the plain man stops 
in this world, while the scientist and the metaphysician 
go on beyond it. The plain man is on solid ground when 
he believes in his own world, but he makes a mistake 
when he thinks that this world is all. His world may 
be true and good, and yet there may be something more; 
his interpretation of it may be partial and erroneous. 
His own proverbs, that " All is not gold that glitters,"and 
that " Things are not what they seem," and his experi- 



THE WORLD FROM, DIFFERENT VIEWPOINTS 25 

ence of illusions and deceptions in his own world should 
excite his suspicion and prepare him for something deeper 
in this same direction. His world is not false — unless 
he insists on its being the whole and the final world. 

2. The Scientist's World 

Leaving the plain man behind us, let us now go with 
the scientist into his world. The scientist accepts the 
world of appearances and lives in it just as the plain man 
does, but he also does something more. The distinguish- 
ing mark of the scientist is that he goes behind these 
appearances and seeks their proximate causes. He is 
not satisfied with the first testimony of the senses, but 
begins a process of investigation that revolutionizes the 
world of appearances. The first thing he does is to put 
the sun in the center of the solar system and send the 
earth spinning around it, thus directly reversing one of 
the plainest appearances of the world. It is true that 
this was done long ago and now does not affect us with 
surprise; in fact, it has become the plain man's tradi- 
tional belief. But when first announced this change 
created immense surprise and consternation. The whole 
body of plain men said it contradicted their very eyes 
and was self-evidently false, the priests raged against it, 
and the very scholars, including many scientists, rejected 
it as absurd. Yet the evidence for it finally carried 
conviction even to the plain man's mind. 

This change of belief probably was and is the great- 
est revolution ever wrought in human thought. It 



26 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

shifted the center from the earth to the sun, and thereby 
shifted every point in the universe. No wonder that 
at first it dazed the human mind, for it seemed to rock 
the foundations of the world and to prove that the 
human senses are untrustworthy. So the scientist has 
reversed the first large appearance in that landscape, 
and has done it so conclusively that the plain man ac- 
cepts the result. 

Turning from large things to small, what do we next 
see the scientist doing.? He takes the pebble that the 
plain man thinks continuous and solid, and resolves it 
into an immense number of molecules that are almost in- 
finitely little, so small that the most powerful microscope 
has never seen them and probably never will see them. 
These molecules are separated by spaces that are im- 
mense as compared with the molecules themselves, so 
that the pebble is comparable to the solar system or to a 
nebula of stars. In a sense the scientist looks through 
the pebble as the plain m.an looks out through the heav- 
ens. Not only so, but the scientist next resolves the 
molecules into atoms that are again infinitely small as 
compared with the molecules; and then as the latest 
wonder he again resolves the atom into a swarm of elec- 
trons that are again relatively very small and separated 
by relatively immense spaces. Thus the pebble, so far 
from being continuous and solid, contains vastly more 
empty space than it does space filled with matter. Fi- 
nally, the scientist dissolves the electrons into ether 
whirls or centers of pure energy, and thus all that con- 



THE WORLD FROM DIFFERENT VIEWPOINTS 27 

tinuous, solid, passive matter in which the plain man 
believes so confidently is gone. What is thus true of 
the pebble is true of all the matter composing the land- 
scape and the whole world. The scientist looks through 
it and sees it, not only as discontinuous and separated 
by immense gaps or empty spaces, but as one palpitating 
mass of pure energy. By this time the world of the sci- 
entist is something radically different from that of the 
plain man. 

The scientist sees something still deeper. That whole 
landscape, and indeed the whole world, is in his sight 
one vast mechanism, in which every part is mechanically 
connected with every other part, so that it acts as a 
whole and the slightest tremor or vibration at one point 
effects a corresponding change at every other point 
throughout the whole universe. Every vibration of every 
molecule or atom or electron can be explained in terms 
of mechanical laws. The scientist sees this framework 
of law underlying and causing and explaining all the 
appearances that the plain man sees. He hears the 
rustle of a leaf and connects it with atmospheric changes 
beyond the Arctic circle. He notes the tide rolling in 
on yonder beach and sees its cause in the moon that is 
heaping the sea up under its pull. He knows that every 
breath he draws alters the level of the Atlantic, and that 
when he picks up the pebble he changes the position of 
every star in the sky. Not only does the scientist see 
the world as it now exists thus all linked and woven to- 
gether, but he also sees it by a continuous process of 



28 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

evolution descending out of an inconceivably distant 
past and rolling forward into an endless future. 

Thus the scientist sees a different world from that 
which the plain man sees. He is inclined to be very 
proud of his world. Perhaps he looks back with some 
degree of disparagement and pity upon the plain man's 
world, if not upon the plain man himself, although as a 
class scientists are not given to such thoughts. He sees 
that the plain man's world is true and good from the 
plain man's point of view, but that it is a superficial and 
poor world compared with the depth and grandeur of 
the world his eyes see. 

Now the scientist's world, like the plain man's world, 
is true and good as far as it goes. He has looked 
through appearances into their proximate causes, and 
thus has reversed some appearances and put a different 
aspect on all of them. He has found a system of uni- 
versal causation and thus laid bare the mechanism and 
order and harmony of the world. His investigations and 
discoveries have also been of enormous practical use as he 
has caught and conquered the forces of nature and made 
them the nimble servants of man. More than any other 
man the scientist has multiplied our comforts and lux- 
uries and created our vast, splendid, modern civilization. 

Nevertheless, the scientist is in danger of falling into 
the same error as the plain man, that of thinking he 
sees to the bottom of the world. He hears vague rumors 
of a metaphysical world beyond, and may be somewhat 
suspicious of it. Many of the things he hears about 



THE WORLD FROM DIFFERENT VIEWPOINTS 29 

this world may be to him idle tales or absurd conceits. 
In fact, some scientists appear never to have so much 
as heard of the questions the metaphysician asks and 
of the world he explores, and their unsophisticated inno- 
cence of these things may amuse the metaphysician as 
much as some of the notions of the plain man amuse the 
scientist. The scientist's world, like the plain man's world, 
is not false — unless he insists on its being the whole 
and the final world. 

3. The Metaphysician's World 

Let us now enter with the metaphysician into his 
world. He also believes in the plain man's world and 
in the scientist's world. He believes in them for what 
they are, and uses and enjoys them as much as anybody. 
He, too, is a man of flesh and blood, and keeps his feet 
on the ground. But he also knows how to leave these 
worlds behind and go on towards perfection. The 
metaphysician appreciates the plain man's appearances 
and the scientist's causes, but he is not satisfied to stop 
with these. The distinguishing mark of the metaphy- 
sician is this : he goes behind proximate causes and seeks 
one ultimate cause. He sees that the scientist with his 
proximate causes is still in the land of phenomena, of 
appearances, though his appearances are somewhat 
deeper than those of the plain man. The metaphysician 
seeks to get behind all appearances to reality itself. 

What, then, does the metaphysician see as he looks 
out over that landscape ? We are now concerned only 



30 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

with giving a descriptive hint of the nature of the meta- 
physician's world, and not at all with the processes and 
proofs by which he reaches and justifies it. As he looks 
out over that landscape, the metaphysician begins a pro- 
cess of dismantling it and packing its apparent contents 
away in his own mind. The first thing he does is to 
sweep all light and color off the landscape and absorb 
them into his own sensations. He believes that light is 
a subjective sensation excited in his mind by some ob- 
jective cause in the landscape bearing no resemblance 
to the subjective experience. There is therefore no 
light or brightness out there on the landscape, but it is 
all dark as absolute night. Light being thus swept off 
the landscape, all color goes with it, and there is no 
green on the grass or blue in the sky. In the same way, 
the sensations of sound, taste, smell, and touch are be- 
lieved by the metaphysician to be subjective, and there 
is nothing like them in the landscape. There is no 
song of birds in the air, or sweetness in the apple, no 
pungent odor in the crushed pine leaves, and no hard- 
ness in the stone. These are subjective states in the 
mind, though they have objective causes. The meta- 
physician thus stands fronting an external world that in 
itself is dark, silent, tasteless, and odorless, though it has 
the power of exciting a wonderful world of sensation in 
the mind. So far all metaphysicians agree. 

At this point metaphysicians divide into two great 
companies, the dualists and the monists. 

The dualists stop this process of dismantling and ab- 



THE WORLD FROM DIFFERENT VIEWPOINTS 3 1 

sorbing the world at the points of space and time, leav- 
ing the world existing as a mass of extended reality 
moving through temporal changes, with which the mind 
holds relations. 

The monists go on with the process of unifying the 
world, but carry it out to different results according as 
their monism is materialistic, idealistic, or agnostic. 

The materialistic monist views matter extended in 
space and moving in time as the ultimate reality, and 
mind as a manifestation of it, a kind of halo or efflores- 
cence playing around or within it that was exhaled out 
of it and will be reabsorbed ; and thus he packs mind 
back into matter. 

The idealistic monist carries the process of dismantling 
the world to its logical end in the opposite direction. 
He breaks down the very framework of space and time 
in which the world is contained and withdraws it into 
the mind. He conceives that space and time are intui- 
tions of the mind and are no more qualities of things 
than are color and sound, but are modes of our experi- 
ence excited by the objective reality. This objective 
reality he conceives to be mind or spirit, and usually the 
idealist conceives it to be one Absolute Spirit, or God, 
who affects us in the modes we call sensation and intui- 
tion. The idealistic metaphysician thus regards that 
landscape and the whole world as the reaction of our 
mind on God's mind. Sensation, space, and time are 
subjective in our mind, but they have their exciting 
cause and objective reality in God's mind. 



32 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

The agnostic monist views matter as one and mind 
as another manifestation of the same unknown reality ; 
and he may, or he may not, regard space and time as 
subjective in the mind. 

By this time the plain man finds himself in a strange 
world, and all things begin to swim before his eyes and 
to melt into a mist of nothingness. The dualist is radical 
and destructive enough in sweeping all light, colors, 
sounds, tastes, and odors off the world, but the idealistic 
monist seems to lose his reason and go mad when he 
utterly wrecks and dissolves the world, even to its frame- 
work of space and time, and packs it away in the mind. 
Is not this the insanity of speculation .'' Who can con- 
ceive, much less believe in, and still less live in, a world 
of pure spirit where there is only a swarm of finite 
minds and one Infinite Mind .'' Are we really ghosts ? 
Such a seemingly spectral world frightens the plain 
man, and even the scientist may flee from it in terror, 
or else — he may laugh at it. 

Thus the metaphysician appears to have fulfilled be- 
fore its time the poet's prophecy : — 

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, 
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 
Leave not a wrack behind. 

Both the plain man and the scientist may turn upon 
the metaphysician with the charge : — 



THE WORLD FROM DIFFERENT VIEWPOINTS ^^ 

Woe ! woe ! 

Thou hast destroyed 

The beautiful world 

With violent blow ; 

'Tis shivered ! 'Tis shattered ! 

The fragments abroad by a demigod scatter'd. 

Now we sweep 

The wrecks into nothingness ! 

Fondly we weep 

The beauty that's gone. — Faust. 



Nevertheless, the metaphysician of whatever type 
finds his world solid and comfortable. The supreme 
question with him is truth, and he believes his view is 
nearer the ultimate reality than either the plain man's 
appearances or the scientist's proximate causes. He 
remembers how startlingly the scientist reversed appear- 
ances in putting the sun in the center of the solar 
system, and he bids both the plain man and the scientist 
not to think it strange when a still more starthng ex- 
perience comes upon them along the same line. All we 
need to do is to get used to a new situation, and 
presently we shall feel at home. 

Such are the three worlds : the plain man's world of 
phenomena as they are presented to the senses; the 
scientist's world of proximate causes as they are traced 
by the observing mind ; and the metaphysician's world 
of ultimate reality as it is reached by a still deeper 
process of reflection. These three worlds are not 
sharply divided off from, but they shade into, one an- 
other ; and it is the same general mental process pro- 



34 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

gressively applied and made more and more thorough 
that carries us from one into the next. The plain man 
observes and reflects on his world of appearances in 
some degree ; the scientist observes and reflects more 
carefully, and thus discovers his world of causes ; and 
the metaphysician simply reflects more deeply and stren- 
uously still in reaching his world of ultimate reality. 

The world of appearances must ever remain the 
world in which we live and work. The warp and woof 
of our experiences are woven of its phenomena. Our 
business is adjusted to it, our habits are framed to fit it, 
our language is saturated and colored with it, and our 
inmost thoughts are cast in its molds. Passing into the 
scientific world does not take us out of the practical 
world of appearances. We still speak and even think 
of the sun as rising and setting, though we know that 
this motion is an appearance. We still speak of solids, 
though we know that nothing is solid. So in passing 
into the metaphysician's world we still retain the habits 
of thought and speech that reflect the phenomenal 
world. We speak and think of things as being colored 
and resonant and sapid and odorous and as occupying 
space and moving in time, though we may believe that 
these qualities are subjective experiences of our own 
minds and do not belong to external things. The 
metaphysician's world is an attempt to conceive and 
construct in thought the world of ultimate reality, and 
such a construction does not take away or change the 
phenomenal world in which we live. 



THE WORLD FROM DIFFERENT VIEWPOINTS 35 

We have thus endeavored to give some conception 
of the metaphysician's world, and we find it diverging 
into several forms. We are now to proceed to unfold 
the processes by which the metaphysician attempts to 
reach his world, and to indicate the grounds on which 
its several forms are founded. 



CHAPTER III 

THE SUBJECTIVITY OF SENSATION 

In this investigation it will be best to begin with the 
ordinary view of the world, and then subject it to ex- 
amination to see whether it will stand without modifica- 
tion, or whether it must be reconstructed to meet the 
demands of our thought. This has been the history of 
philosophy. The scientist holds on to the plain man's 
view at as many points as he can, and recedes from it 
only as he is driven by logical pressure ; and the meta- 
physician adheres to the scientist's view and yields only 
under the same compulsion to a deeper reconstruction. 

The ordinary view of the world pictures it as an ex- 
ternal, extended, insensate reality, bright with light, 
sonorous, odorous, sapid, and hard. The average man 
thinks of these qualities as being in the material world 
and equally present whether a sentient mind is present 
to experience them or not ; and we all habitually think 
of such a world, and in it we live and move and have 
our being. Will such a theory of the world stand .-' or 
must it be reconstructed? Let us start with the as- 
sumption of such a world, and then examine it from 
different points of view. 

36 



THE SUBJECTIVITY OF SENSATION 37 

I, The Physical View 

The physicist first examines this world, beginning at 
the outer end of the complex fact we call sensation. He 
investigates sound and finds it to consist in the external 
world of vibrations in the sonorous body which are 
communicated to the atmosphere and propagated 
through it to the drum or tympanum of the ear. In a 
similar way he finds light to consist of infinitely more 
rapid vibrations in an inconceivably finer atmosphere or 
medium, called ether, these enormously rapid pulsations 
striking against the retina of the eye somewhat as the 
pulsations of the air strike against the tympanum of the 
ear. Thus all that we find in the external world in the 
case of sound and light are vibrations of air and ether. 
These vibrations bear no resemblance to the sound and 
light we experience. We can only conceive them as 
being minute motions back and forth in tenuous media 
that are in themselves absolutely silent and dark. In 
the case of odor the scientist finds it is caused by a fine 
rain of particles thrown off by the odorous substance, 
which impinge on membranes of the nostrils. In taste, 
particles of the sapid substance act upon the papillae 
of the tongue. As in the case of sound and light, these 
causes bear no resemblance to the sensations in the 
mind. In the sense of touch, the scientist finds that what 
we call hardness in an object is the energy of the atoms 
driving and holding them apart and resisting our attempt 
to force them together. We press against the object, 



38 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

and the object presses against us ; and the degree of 
firmness with which it resists us constitutes the degree 
of its hardness. 

The result of the physicist's examination of the ex- 
ternal world is to change the ordinary view of it pro- 
foundly. He resolves its apparent brightness into 
vibrations, its sounds into waves in the air, its odors 
and tastes into an emission of minute particles, and its 
hardness into resistance. Already the world of our 
naive minds has undergone a reconstruction that results 
in an external world very different from what we sup- 
posed it to be. 

2. The Physiological View 

The physiologist at this point takes up the problem 
of remodeling the world, and carries it a step farther. 
He dissects the nervous apparatus of sensation and dis- 
closes its delicate mechanism. Fine threads run from 
the various external sense organs to the sensory centers 
of the brain. The tympanum of the ear vibrates in uni- 
son with the air waves that in turn have been caused by 
the vibrating body. These vibrations of the tympanum 
are propagated through the complex apparatus of the 
internal ear to the auditory nerve, which transmits 
some kind of influence to the brain, producing in it an 
excitation on occasion of which the mind experiences 
sound. The auditory nerve does not transmit mechani- 
cal vibrations similar to those which reach the tympanum 
of the ear, but some other mode of activity of unknown 



THE SUBJECTIVITY OF SENSATION 39 

nature. This unknown influence is again unlike the 
vibrations of the sonorous body and wholly different 
from the experience of sound in the mind. Similar 
statements apply to the optic nerves, transmitting the 
shocks of the ether vibrations upon the retina of the 
eye to the optic tract in the brain, and to the nerves 
transmitting the excitations of odor, taste, and touch from 
their sense organs to their respective brain centers. 
The nature of the unknown influence thus transmitted 
along the nerves is unlike the external cause of the 
sensation as it arrives at the sense organ, unlike the ex- 
citation of this organ itself, and wholly different from 
the sensation. 

Thus the nervous system interposes between the outer 
sense excitation and the inner mental experience links 
that are different from both. If sound consists of pul- 
sations of certain wave lengths and frequency in the 
air, such pulsations do not reach the brain over the 
auditory nerve. If colors consist of certain vibrations 
of infinitesimal wave lengths and enormous rapidity in 
the ether, there are no such vibrations in the brain, for 
they cannot be transmitted over the optic nerves. Similarly, 
there are no sweet or odorous particles in the brain, for 
they cannot be transmitted along the nerves. If touch 
consists in pressure on the external ends of the nerves, 
there is no such pressure on the inner ends of the nerves, 
as they terminate in the brain. Thus the changes tak- 
ing place in the brain are of a different nature from 
those taking place in the external world. If the external 



40 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

world consists of an extended reality that is luminous, 
sonorous, odorous, sapid, and resistant, such extended 
reality cannot be brought into the brain, for it is separated 
from the brain by lines of communication that cannot 
transmit such modes of reality. The physicist and the 
physiologist have combined to prove such transmission 
impossible. 

3. The Psychological View 

The psychologist now appears on the scene and takes 
up the thread of investigation at its inner end. He 
studies the nature of sensation itself. At once he points 
out the fact that sensation is a mental experience totally 
different in nature from anything in the external world. 
It is a conscious state of the soul, and as such cannot be 
compared with anything material. The two things are 
so different in nature that there is no common ground 
or element in them. The one is a state of thinking and 
feeling, and the other is an unthinking, insensate sub- 
stance. All our sensations are mental states. Sound is 
a state of mind in which we have a certain peculiar 
mental experience that cannot be described and can 
only be felt. Light is a state of mind in which we ex- 
perience a sense of brightness. So taste, odor, and 
touch are mental states in which the soul is conscious of 
certain peculiar experiences. It is impossible to resolve 
a sensation into anything else than a mental state, or to 
think of it in the terms of material existence. A sen- 
sation cannot be round or square, bright or dark, sonor- 



THE SUBJECTIVITY OF SENSATION 41 

ous or silent, sweet or bitter, hard or soft, in itself, 
because it is not an extended material substance, but a 
mental affection, and mind does not and cannot have 
material qualities ; it is stii generis, a kind of reality that 
is apart from material reality and refuses to mix with it. 

Sensation, then, has its seat in the mind and is never 
found outside of it. This is an elementary fact in 
psychology, but it is a fundamental fact with far-reach- 
ing consequences in metaphysics, and it may be well to 
illustrate it at some length in order that it may be seen 
clearly and grasped firmly. The fact is open to our 
immediate introspection. When we are hearing a sound 
or seeing a light, we are not aware of any vibrations in 
the air or in the ether, and may not have so much as 
heard of these things ; yet the physicists tell us that 
these vibrations are all that is in the external world as 
the cause of our sensations of sound and light. We 
need only pay attention to what is going on in our 
minds to perceive that our sensations are wholly subjec- 
tive. 

It is thus a mere truism, but one that needs to be em- 
phasized in this connection, that there is no sensation of 
sound in a sonorous body, or of light in a luminous 
body, or of sweetness in sugar, or of odor in a rose, or 
of hardness in a stone. These sensations are in every 
instance states of experience in us caused by some 
action upon us by these things. There is no sound 
when a bell is ringing or when Niagara is falling, and no 
sentient mind is present to hear these things : all that 



42 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

is going on in them is a state of motion, and motion 
cannot hear. The .bell is not conscious and hears no 
sound. Niagara is only a mass of moving water and 
cannot hear its own fall. There is no redness in the 
rose, or green in the grass, or blue in the sky. Red and 
green and blue are sensations in us, and have no exist- 
ence or meaning outside of a sentient mind. The sun 
is not bright ; it is only in a state of motion, and motion 
cannot be described as either bright or dark. The 
motion of the sun is transmitted through the ether to 
our eyes, and reaches the brain as some kind of action 
which is the exciting cause of the sensation of light in 
our minds ; until that sensation is experienced, there is 
no light, but only motion. Of course we speak of the 
sun as being bright, and this use of language is proper 
and inevitable. But so also do we speak of the sun as 
rising and setting, and yet we know that this is only an 
appearance, and not the reality. Light is something 
that cannot exist in the sun, because the sun is not sen- 
tient and cannot experience any sensation of light ; and 
light cannot be transmitted to us through the ether and 
the optic nerves, because these things cannot experience 
any sensation. There may be motion in the form of 
vibrations in the sun and in the ether, but there can be 
no hght until the mind is affected with this sensation. 

And so it is with all the other sensations. Sugar is 
not sweet, because it cannot feel sweetness ; it only has 
certain chemical powers by which it can act upon the 
tongue. We call it sweet by a metaphorical use of 



THE SUBJECTIVITY OF SENSATION 43 

language, but the real sweetness is in the mind and not 
in the matter. The rose is not fragrant ; it only emits 
minute particles which affect certain nerves, and then 
the mind experiences the sensation of fragrance. Hard- 
ness is not in the stone or iron ; it is in us as a mental 
experience, a condition of our will in which it is encoun- 
tering resistance. 

A further illustration and proof of the subjectivity of 
sensation may be given. The external cause of sound 
is vibration in the sounding body transmitted to us 
through the air. The lowest number of these vibra- 
tions that produce in us a sensation of sound is sixteen 
a second. If there be only fifteen vibrations a second, 
nothing is heard ; but increasing the number from fifteen 
to sixteen vibrations a second causes a sound to be heard 
in the mind. The only change in the external world is 
one more vibration a second, but this causes in the mind 
the whole difference between silence and sound. The 
internal difference bears no proportion and likeness to 
the external difference. At the upper end of the scale 
it is possible for the human mind to hear vibrations up to 
thirty-eight thousand vibrations a second. When the 
number of vibrations increases beyond this, the sound 
again passes into silence, and again a slight change in 
the external world is succeeded by a totally different 
change in the mind. The same kind of experience is 
had in connection with light waves. When the vibra- 
tions of the ether number about four hundred trillions a 
second, they affect us as light of a dull red color. When 



44 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

the number of vibrations is reduced below this, they no 
longer affect us as light, but they affect us as heat, a 
totally different sensation. As the vibrations increase 
in number, the sensation of light changes in color from 
red up through orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and 
violet, each change in color being caused by shorter and 
more rapid vibrations. When these vibrations are about 
double the number of red light, they again cease to affect 
us as light, but still continue to affect a photographic 
plate. Thus while the outer changes in the vibrations 
are a continuous increase in rapidity, the mental changes 
are wholly different ; and again it is seen that sensations 
are subjective states of mind. 

This does not mean, it must always be said, that sen- 
sations in the mind have no cause or occasion in the 
objective world ; they are not self-caused subjective 
states, having no connection with objective conditions. 
As we have constantly seen, they do have an exciting 
cause in the objective world, but the nature of this cause 
is not yet before us, and will be considered later. 

4. The Metaphysical View 

The metaphysician now takes up this investigation 
and carries it still farther. He calls the inner sensation 
the phenomenon, and the other cause the noumenon. 
A phenomenon is what the mind experiences when it is 
acted on by an objective cause, and the objective cause 
is the corresponding noumenon. The phenomenon is 
that which appears to the mind, and the noumenon is 



THE SUBJECTIVITY OF SENSATION 45 

the reality which is the cause of this appearance. Sen- 
sations are thus phenomena by definition. They are the 
things immediately known to, and present in, conscious- 
ness. Thus, in the case of an orange, its yellowness, 
taste, odor, and hardness are immediately in the mind 
as its states, and these are the phenomena of the orange. 
We have seen that the physicist and the physiologist 
find, as the cause of these sensations in the mind, 
certain vibrations and other modes of motion in the ob- 
jective world. At this point the metaphysician steps 
forward to show that these outer physical changes as 
thus conceived are of the nature of phenomena, also. In 
the case of sound, the physicist tells us that its external 
cause consists of vibrations propagated through the at- 
mosphere. He proves this by pointing to certain ways 
in which the air behaves. He shows us that when a 
bell is struck in the air, it affects us as sound, but that 
when it is struck under a glass receiver from which the 
air has been exhausted, we hear no sound. He has in- 
genious processes by which he measures the length and 
rapidity of these sound waves ; and he assures us that if 
we had eyes of sufficient refinement to discern the air it- 
self, we would see these waves of successive condensa- 
tion and rarefaction. The physicist does not actually 
see these waves, but he has a mental conception of them 
and is as sure of them as though they were before his 
eyes. 

Now what the physicist tells us about these waves is 
true from his point of view, and he may believe that 



46 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

they exist in reality in the external world just as he im- 
agines them. But in doing this he is making the same 
kind of mistake the plain man makes 'when he thinks 
that sound exists in the external world just as he hears 
it. For the metaphysician now points out that these 
ways in which the air behaves are only the ways in which 
something is affecting our minds, and are themselves 
phenomena in our minds. The motions of the waves 
and the visible waves themselves, if we could see them, 
what are these but states of our minds } They are them- 
selves sensations of the mind, either in reality or in 
imagination, and as such they take us no nearer the 
ultimate reality than we were before. If we could see 
the sound waves in the air, we would only be experienc- 
ing a phenomenon of which the noumenon would still 
be unknown to us. So with the vibrations of ether that 
are the external cause of the sensation of light. The 
physicist infers and proves the existence of these vibra- 
tions, as in the case of the sound waves. But all that 
he perceives and conceives in connection with these 
ether vibrations are themselves mental states caused in 
him by the objective reality ; and the same process of rea- 
soning that led us to see that the subjective sensation 
of light is different from these external ether vibrations, 
now leads us to see that the mental conception we form 
of these vibrations is different from the external reality. 
The same is true of the other sensations of odor, taste, 
touch, and motion. The physicist's conceptions of the 
external causes of these sensations are themselves mental 



THE SUBJECTIVITY OF SENSATION 47 

states; appearances or phenomena in our minds of 
realities or noumena that are still beyond us and un- 
known to us. He may think he is dealing with a physi- 
cal entity, but his " atom " is really a psychological 
conception built up in his own mind. 

Let us state this in another way. When we perceive 
through our senses a material object, such as an orange, 
we experience sensations of color, sound, odor, taste, and 
touch which combine into mental unity and form the 
mental construct of the orange, which is the orange as we 
know it. The physicist not only finds the cause of these 
sensations in certain motions in the orange, but he also 
resolves the orange into very small particles or molecules, 
the molecules into atoms, and the atoms into electrons. 
Are we getting any closer to the ultimate reality by 
these ever more minute divisions .-' We do not perceive 
these things through any of our senses. But suppose 
they were so magnified or our senses were so refined 
that we could see and hear and touch them ; would we 
not still be conscious only of sensations or phenomena 
in our minds .'' The conceptions we form of atoms and 
electrons are the ways these things would affect us if 
they could individually be made to excite our senses ; 
and however far this process may be carried, and how- 
ever refined it may become, the resulting states in our 
minds are phenomena of objective reality we have not 
yet reached. 

The result of this reasoning is that all our sensations 
are phenomena or states of mind caused by noumena or 



48 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

objective conditions the nature of which we have yet to 
find. Not only the green in the grass and the blue in 
the sky, the perfume of the rose and the taste of the 
orange, are mental states, but the grass itself and the 
rose and the orange, yes, and the sun and stars as we 
experience these things, are mental constructs of sensa- 
tion or phenomena in our minds. Not only so, but our 
bodies with all their organs as known in our experience 
are just so many constructs of sensation or phenomena 
to us. The whole objective material universe is thus 
resolved into subjective phenomena of which the nou- 
mena or objective causes are as yet unknown to us. 
Such a universe may seem at first sight to have been 
dissolved into airy nothingness, but the world of our 
experience has not been touched by this process of 
reasoning and remains as solid, orderly, and trustworthy 
as ever. We have simply taken the first steps towards 
discovering the nature of the world of causation that lies 
back of our experience. 

This subjectivity of sensation has thus profoundly re- 
modeled our view of the external world and has carried 
us far from the plain man's world towards the meta- 
physician's world. So far psychologists and meta- 
physicians are generally agreed. We must now look 
into a deeper and still more startling subjectivity. 



CHAPTER IV 
THE SUBJECTIVITY OF SPACE 

We have now reached a point where we see that 
external objects as regards their sensational qualities 
are subjective states of the mind. As invisible actinic 
rays of the sunbeam in falling upon a sensitive photo- 
graphic plate stir its chemicals into activity and call 
forth in it images that are wholly unlike themselves, so 
influences from external objects fall upon the mind and 
stir it into action by which sensational images arise in it 
that are unlike the supposed exciting causes. These 
various images of color, sound, odor, taste, and touch 
combine into unitary images, or objects. 

But there are two additional elements in these objects 
we have not yet considered — space and time. The 
sensational images combine into objects that assume 
spatial forms and are successive in time. These addi- 
tional elements are called intuitions, in distinction from 
the sensations of the senses. Whence come these intui- 
tions } Are they inherent qualities of the supposed 
external objects which impose themselves on the 
mind's subjective states ? or are they also subjective 
principles in the mind, like its sensational powers, 
which the mind itself supplies to, and imposes upon, its 
E 49 



50 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

own sensational states ? The latter view is the one held 
by idealists. This subjectivity of space and time is the 
hardest saying and greatest rock of offense in philosophy 
to the plain man, and at first sight he can hardly think 
of it as other than an absurdity. Nevertheless, what 
has gained and compelled the consent of so many master 
thinkers in this field of thought must have some foun- 
dation, and should receive our close and unprejudiced 
consideration. 

I. The Theory Explained 

Let us first understand the theory. We must now for 
our present purpose assume the idealistic point of view 
and think of external objects as spiritual in their nature, 
or spirit, the kind of reality we immediately know in 
ourselves and know as non-spatial in its nature. Influ- 
ences from these mental objects fall upon the mind and 
excite it into action according to its own constitution 
and laws. By such action the mind experiences a num- 
ber of sensational states which combine into a unitary im- 
age or object under a spatial form. This spatial form does 
not come from the external object in the sense that it is 
a copy of the form of the external object, for this object 
is itself spirit and has no spatial form. The spatial 
form is the product of the mind's own activity, just as 
are the sensational qualities excited by the external 
object. Objects as we know them are thus created 
within the mind by its own inherent powers as these 
are excited by external influences. Space is thus sub- 



THE SUBJECTIVITY OF SPACE 51 

jective in the mind, and is not a condition or mode of 
being in the ontological world. There is no space any- 
where except as a mental intuition or mode of experi- 
ence. Space is in the mind, but the mind is not in 
space; just as color and hardness are in the mind, but 
the mind is not colored or hard. The real world is a 
purely mental world, or world of spirit, without any 
spatial qualities. 

But while space does not exist in the ontological world, 
it does exist as a mental form or intuition in the phe- 
nomenal world. It is a mode of our experience, and as 
such its reality stands untouched by the theory of the 
subjectivity of space. The phenomenal world, which is 
the practical world in which we live, is constantly and 
intuitively conceived by us under spatial forms, and 
nothing can ever, in our present constitution or in our 
present mode of existence, dissolve the reality of this 
world and dissipate it into nothingness. If we keep 
this distinction between the non-spatial form of the on- 
tological world and the spatial form of the phenomenal 
world clearly before us, it will save us from the common 
misconceptions of the theory of the subjectivity of space 
and relieve it from the appearance of absurdity. 

It should be further said, in explanation of the theory, 
that while space is viewed as wholly subjective, yet it is 
not viewed as an uncaused and arbitrary condition of 
mind, any more than sensations are. It is started into 
action by the excitation of objective causes, just as sen- 
sations are thus excited. And, further, the forms of 



52 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

space correspond with particular activities or relations 
in objective conditions, just as sensations correspond with 
definite appropriate causes. Space is thus a symbol or 
kind of language which reports to us corresponding 
modes or relations in the ontological world. We shall 
revert to this point again. 

2. Reasons of the Theory 

Some of the arguments that metaphysicians have used 
to establish this theory are subtle and difficult to grasp, 
but the more convincing ones are easily understood. 

(i) The first argument for the subjectivity of space 
is its analogy with the subjectivity of sensation. As 
sensations are found to be indubitably subjective states 
that arise within us on occasion of objective excitation, 
the tendency is strong to think that the intuition of space 
arises in the same way. The attempt has been made to 
call the intuitions of space and time the primary quali- 
ties of matter, and the sensations of color, sound, odor, 
taste, and touch the secondary qualities, and hold that 
the former inhere in matter and the latter are subjective 
in the mind. But no good grounds can be given for this 
distinction. As the mind when stirred to action pro- 
duces its own sensations, so it would appear that it pro- 
duces its own intuitions. The subjectivity of the primary 
qualities presents no new principle or difficulty over the 
subjectivity of the secondary qualities. 

(2) The primary quality of space cannot be trans- 
mitted through the senses, just as the secondary quali- 



THE SUBJECTIVITY OF SPACE 53 

ties of sensation cannot be so transmitted. If we suppose 
that an external object, such as an orange, exists in a 
spherical spatial form, that spatial form cannot pass 
from that object through the intervening media into the 
mind. The influences the orange emits or exercises are 
various vibrations and minute particles and resistances : 
granting that these exist in a spatial form in the orange, 
they pass through various transformations in transmis- 
sion in which they lose that particular form, and when 
they reach the brain there is nothing round in the exci- 
tation which they set up either in the brain or in the 
mind. There is no reason for thinking the nervous dis- 
turbance in the brain assumes a circular or spherical 
form : rather we know this disturbance does not assume 
this form. Physics and physiology destroy the possibil- 
ity of the transmission of spatial forms, just as they do 
of sensations. 

(3) The argument for the subjectivity of sensation 
that it is a state of mind and cannot exist in an insensate 
reality, applies to the intuition of space. The intuition 
of space in the mind is not a spatial form, but only a 
mode of experience, or a mental state. There is nothing 
in the mind that is extended as a plane, or that fills space 
as a cube ; nothing that is round or square, angular or 
curved, straight or crooked. Our idea of a square is 
not four-sided, or of a circle is not circular, or of a cube 
is not cubical. A crooked line does not create anything 
crooked in the mind. The ideas of the mind are no 
more round or square, straight or crooked, than they 



54 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

are red or green, hot or cold, hard or soft. The intui- 
tion of space is thus a mode of the mind's experience, 
just as its sensations are. It was not brought into the 
mind through the senses, but is the product of the mind's 
own activity. As we experience space, it is undoubtedly 
an intuition or state of mind, and no mental state or 
quality can be attributed to an insensate reality. The 
mind knows space only in its own experience. It can- 
not get out into space and move around in it, for as a 
non-spatial being it has no such power. Thus since 
space arises in the mind by its own intuition, there is 
the same reason for believing it is a subjective state of 
the mind and not an external reality as there is for be- 
lieving the same thing in the case of the sensations. 

(4) The apparent impossibility of interaction be- 
tween a spatial brain and a non-spatial mind is an 
argument against the externahty of space and for its 
subjectivity. Granting that the brain is spatial, how 
can such spatial reality and the non-spatial mind be 
brought into relation and interaction ? How can the 
brain act on the mind, and how can the mind appre- 
hend the brain } The brain cannot act on the mind 
at definite points or parts, for the mind has no such 
points or parts. And the mind cannot see or hear or 
smell or taste or touch the brain, for it would then need 
to have another set of sense-organs to see and hear 
and smell and taste and touch the brain with. We 
cannot conceive how these two modes of reality can 
even get together. The brain is in space and has a 



THE SUBJECTIVITY OF SPACE 55 

spatial form, but the mind not only has no spatial form, 
but is not even in space ; it has no spatial relations 
whatever. Professor G. S. Fullerton, of Columbia Uni- 
versity, a dualist, affirms : " We must remember that 
the mind is neither in the brain nor near the brain. . . . 
My mind ... is not a whit nearer to my brain than it 
is to the brain of the Emperor of China or to that of the 
Pope of Rome." ^ He is correct in this affirmation, for 
the mind, having no spatial quality, can have no spatial 
relation. This fact, thus boldly asserted by a dualist, 
gravely embarrasses, if it does not render impossible, 
the dualistic position that the spatial brain and the non- 
spatial mind must nevertheless interact. Dualism is 
everywhere perplexed and imperiled by the necessity 
of combining two such diverse and antagonistic modes 
of being as mind and matter ; but idealism escapes this 
difficulty by reducing these two modes of being to one 
reality. 

(5) A strong argument for the subjectivity of space 
is drawn from the ontological nature of the soul. 
We have already seen that objective realities are known 
to us as phenomena, which are states of our mind ex- 
cited by these realities. The soul itself, however, is not 
a phenomenon ; that is, it is not an object excited in us 
by something other than the self, but is reality immedi- 
ately known to us as the self. The unity of our con- 
scious life is our soul, and this reality does not make 
itself known to us through phenomena, for then we 

^ "A System of Metaphysics," page 316, 



56 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

would need to have another soul to experience these 
phenomena, but it is known by immediate intuition. 
The soul is not something different from what we 
experience in our consciousness, as a phenomenon is 
different from its noumenon, but it is our experience 
as consciousness. Our conscious life is thus our soul, 
and our soul is our conscious life. In our soul we thus 
know reality at first hand without any intermediation 
of phenomena. This fact that we know reality directly 
in the soul is a primary fact of consciousness, and it is a 
basal principle of ideahstic metaphysics. For we thus 
come upon the fact that the only reality we know by 
immediate contact and intuition is spirit and is non- 
spatial in its nature. 

We sometimes have a desire that we might get at 
reality directly and know its nature by immediate vision 
and not have to reach it through the roundabout pro- 
cess of the senses and phenomena. Cannot this veil of 
phenomena be torn away and we be permitted to see 
reahty face to face .'' This is done in our experience of 
the soul. Here we do not know reality through senses 
and phenomena, seeing things afar off through a glass 
darkly, but we have immediate vision of reahty and see 
face to face. And reality when thus known is found 
to be spiritual and non-spatial. 

It is now but a short step and a fair inference to the 
conclusion that the reality which is objective to ourselves 
and manifests itself in us as phenomena is of the same 
nature as the reality in ourselves. There is a strong 



THE SUBJECTIVITY OF SPACE 57 

tendency in us to believe in the unity of reality; that 
the world under all its manifestations is one web woven 
of the same threads throughout, but arranged in differ- 
ent patterns ; that it is not divided and scattered, but is 
one continuous piece. The reasons for this belief will 
appear as we proceed, but, granting it, we are led to 
believe that the same power that wells up within us as 
consciousness wells up without us as the world of phe- 
nomena. Mind and matter, soul and world, are thus one 
unbroken piece of reality, one stream flowing from the 
same fountain, but issuing in different jets. " Thou art 
that," said the ancient Hindu philosophy, a saying that 
expresses the deep kinship and unity of soul and world. 
The soul is a little world, and the world is a great soul, 
as we shall further see in Chapters VI and VIII. When 
we know the soul, then, we know the world. The reality 
in the one is the same reality that is in the other. The 
soul is spirit: therefore the world is spirit ; and as the soul 
is non-spatial in its nature, so also is the world. 

(6) This argument is confirmed by the spiritual 
nature of the ontological world as determined on in- 
dependent grounds. These grounds will be set forth 
in Chapter VIII. According to this fundamental prin- 
ciple of ideahsm, the ontological reality is mind — the 
one Infinite Mind, or God, and all finite, created minds. 
Objective things which affect us as our phenomenal 
world are manifestations of God's mind in our minds, 
or the reaction of our minds on his mind. He thinks 
and feels and wills the world, and his thoughts reacting 



58 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

on our minds excite in them our phenomenal world : his 
thoughts thus become our objects. If this view be 
established, then the subjectivity of space is estab- 
lished along with it. Spirit, whether human or divine, 
is non-spatial in its nature. Our mind has no spatial 
form or quality, though it has the power of conceiving 
its phenomenal experiences under spatial forms ; and 
no one ever thinks of God as having spatial dimensions. 
If, therefore, the one reality in the universe is mind, and 
matter is only its subjective manifestation, space is 
subjective and does not exist as an objective reality in 
the ontological world. 

(7) Kant's argument for the subjectivity of space is 
that the intuition of space is never the product of our 
experience, but precedes our experience as an a priori 
form. This argument of his is brief and clear and may 
be quoted in full : — 

" I. Space is not an empirical concept which has been 
derived from external experience. For in order that 
certain sensations should be referred to something out- 
side myself, i.e. to something in a different part of space 
from that where I am ; again, in order that I may be 
able to represent them as side by side, that is, not only 
as different, but as in different places, the representation 
of space must be already there. Therefore the repre- 
sentation of space cannot be borrowed through experi- 
ence from relations of external phenomena, but, on the 
contrary, this external experience becomes possible only 
by means of the representation of space. 



THE SUBJECTIVITY OF SPACE 59 

"2. Space is a necessary representation a priori form- 
ing the very foundation of all external intuitions. It is 
impossible to imagine that there should be no space, 
though one might very well imagine that there should be 
space without objects to fill it. Space is therefore re- 
garded as a condition of the possibility of phenomena, 
not as a determination produced by them ; it is a rep- 
resentation a priori which necessarily precedes all ex- 
ternal phenomena." ^ 

The argument in brief is, that in order that the mind 
may interpret the excitation caused in it by external ob- 
jects in terms of or under the form of space, the mind 
must already have this mode of representation. Exter- 
nal objects send up into the brain and to the mind cer- 
tain excitations : how can the mind cast these into the 
spatial form unless it already has the power of origi- 
nating this form } If the mind did not already know the 
meaning of these excitations, they would speak to it in 
an unknown tongue. This argument applies to all the 
senses without exception. Some dualists concede that 
our sensations are subjective, and cannot give us the in- 
tuition of space, until they come to the sense of touch or 
of touch-movement : here they make a stand and try to 
extract from this sense the reality of an extended world. 
Thus Professor Fullerton relies on " touch-movement 
sensations" to give us "the very stuff of which the exter- 
nal world is made." ^ But this distinction will not hold. 

^ " Critique of Pure Reason," F. Max Miiller's translation, pages 18-19. 
2" A System of Metaphysics," pages 379, 416. 



6o THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

The sensation of touch is as subjective as any other sen- 
sation, and can no more give us our primary intuition of 
space than can other sensations. Our senses, including 
touch, can no more give us space than they can give us 
color and sound, and they only furnish the exciting causes 
on occasion of which this intuition arises in our minds. 

(8) There are certain difficulties involved in the idea 
of an ontological space that have great weight with some 
thinkers. If there be such space, what is it .-" Is it some 
thing .'' or nothing .? Either horn of this dilemma, if seized, 
will give us trouble, if it does not impale us. If there be 
such ontological space, is it infinite in extent, or is it finite.'' 
We cannot conceive it as being either the one or the 
other, and this antinomy seems to embarrass the idea of 
ontological space. Great thinkers, such as Immanuel 
Kant and Sir William Hamilton, have puzzled over this 
difficulty and given it up as insoluble. The existence 
of ontological space is also said to be inconsistent with 
the unity of reality. If any reality exists with part ex- 
ternal to part in space, then it is divided and its unity is 
shattered. The unity of the soul and of any spiritual 
being consists in its indivisible conscious life, with no 
parts of faculties that are outside of, or in any spatial 
relation with, one another. The introduction of spatial 
relations into reality would sever its unity and destroy it. 
Both of these difficulties disappear when space is viewed 
as a subjective intuition. 

Moreover, is there any fixed standard of space objec- 
tive to the mind ? What is the real size or distance of 



THE SUBJECTIVITY OF SPACE 6l 

objects ? If we look at them with our unaided eyes, we 
see them at a certain distance and of a certain size. But 
if we use a telescope, the distances are shortened up, and 
if a microscope, the sizes are magnified. The simple in- 
troduction of a convex piece of glass before the eyes 
reconstructs the whole spatial world. Which is the true 
spatial world, that of the natural eye, or that of the 
telescope, or that of the microscope .-' No two of us see 
the same space forms, for our eyes differ endlessly in con- 
vexity, and a minute difference at this point changes the 
spatial form of the whole universe. Space depends on 
the seeing eye as much as on the object seen. This puts 
a large subjective factor into our space conceptions and 
points towards a deeper subjectivity in the mind itself. 
Such puzzles and refinements as these have little force 
with some minds, but appear weighty and convincing 
with others. 

(9) We may briefly consider the objections to this 
theory. The objection that first presents itself and 
seems utterly to explode the theory is that it is contra- 
dicted by the plain testimony of the senses. Can any 
fact be more certain than that we see things spread out 
before our very eyes and feel them extended with our 
hands .-' The answer is that we see and feel them ex- 
tended only as we see and feel them colored and hard. 
Yet the reasoning that shows us that the color and the 
hardness are not in external objects viewed as extended 
and insensate realities is conclusive, and is admitted by 
practically all dualists themselves. We undoubtedly 



62 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

do see and feel things as extended, but the things we 
thus see and feel are phenomenal things in our own 
minds, and the nature of the ontological things that are 
the exciting causes of these phenomenal experiences is 
yet to be determined. We admit what the plain man 
sees and feels, but we deny his interpretation of his ex- 
perience. He has certain experiences of sensation and 
intuition, and he interprets these into an extended and 
insensate world. We have the same experience with 
him, but are led to interpret it in a different way. 

There are certain popular ways of putting this objec- 
tion that have been used from of old time. One man 
bumps his head against a post and forthwith declares 
that that too, too solid post has forever knocked idealism 
out of it. Another sits down on a chair and trium- 
phantly announces that it is there, and another thumps 
himself on the ribs and thus assures himself he has a 
body and declares he will keep it as long as he can. The 
author once heard a great teacher of theology say to 
his class, " Go up to an idealist and poke him between 
the ribs with an umbrella and he will quickly believe in 
the material world." Now these humorous illustrations 
are all ancient, and they have gained no wisdom with 
age. They raise a laugh among the uncritical, but they 
also amuse the idealist, only he smiles at the unsophis- 
ticated innocence that has not yet understood the theory. 
The idealist also believes in the post and the chair and 
the body as much as anybody. " I have never doubted 
that fire is hot and that ice is cold," says Berkeley, of 



THE SUBJECTIVITY OF SPACE 63 

whom it has been said : " No man ever delighted less 
to expatiate in the regions of the abstract, the impal- 
pable, the fanciful, the unknown. His heart and soul 
clung with inseparable tenacity to the concrete realities 
of the universe." ^ Idealism does not touch the reality 
of flesh and blood, earth and sun and stars, and the 
whole phenomenal world. It only points out the true 
nature of these things, wherein their reality consists. If 
it be true that the world is a spiritual system and that 
objective mental realities cause in us our experience of 
posts and chairs and bodies, then our experience of these 
things is precisely the same as though they existed in 
an extended insensate world. The pain of a toothache 
is just the same whether the tooth be phenomenal matter 
or ontological reality. There is a cause for the tooth- 
ache, and idealism relates only to the nature of this 
cause and not to the reality of the ache. Idealism leaves 
our whole world of experience just as it was, only it 
shows us its true nature and cause. 

We revert once more to the familiar illustration from 
astronomy, which Kant himself used. The old astron- 
omy put the earth in the center and kept the sun mov- 
ing around it. This is just what we see with our eyes 
and is common-sense astronomy. The familiar argu- 
ments of dualism can be brought to its support with 
tremendous effect. But Copernicus came along and re- 
versed all this, putting the sun in the center and sending 

1 Professor James F. Ferrier, quoted in article on Berkeley in Hastings' 
"Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics," 



64 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

the earth spinning around it. What a wild outcry of 
surprise and consternation did this cause ! How plainly 
did it contradict the very senses and throw the stable 
earth off its solid foundations and set the whole heavens 
swimming in confusion ! How science itself refuted and 
resisted it ! How the church raged against it and said 
it contradicted and destroyed the Bible, and threatened 
to put the thumbscrews on Galileo until he recanted ! 
How absurd and insane did the theory seem ! Yet it was 
true, and in time convinced and converted the world. And 
now that we are used to it, we find that the world goes 
on just as it did of old. It is true that we speak of the 
sun as rising and setting, but we understand the true 
nature of this seeming. Once in a while some good 
brother rises up and proclaims the doctrine that " the 
sun do move," but instead of his raising the laugh on 
us, we have our smile at him, and then go on, on the 
even tenor of our way. Very like this is the case of 
idealism. At first it seems to dissolve the world into an 
insubstantial mist or ghost, and great may be our aver- 
sion to it ; but presently we discover that it leaves the 
world of experience untouched and only shows us its 
true nature and cause. We still speak of matter as ex- 
ternal to us and extended and colored and hard, but we 
now know the true nature of these qualities as subjec- 
tive experiences caused by ontological reality. 

The main cause of this practical objection to the 
theory of the subjectivity of space appears to be a mis- 
conception of the meaning and nature of phenomenal 



THE SUBJECTIVITY OF SPACE 65 

reality as contrasted with ontological reality. To many 
minds the phenomenal suggests the unreal, the illusive 
and delusive, a dream or a ghost. But this is not the 
meaning and nature of the phenomenal at all. The 
phenomenal is just as real as the ontological, only it 
is a different mode of reality. It is the experience of 
reality that is most vivid to us, the very world of sight 
and sound and touch and taste in which we live. Noth- 
ing can be more real to us than the phenomenal world, 
and the idealist never disparages it ; it is the dualist that 
does this. The dualist does not appear to be satisfied 
with the phenomenal world ; he seems to think that the 
world of pure experience is a place of shadows, dreams, 
and ghosts, where he can find no solid ground on which 
to set his feet and no air to breathe ; and so he cannot 
rest until he has found some extended, insensate core of 
matter which he can hug to his soul. He distrusts and 
deprecates the phenomenal unless he can look behind it 
and find there some lifeless lump. This is as though 
the spectators at a play should refuse to be interested in 
and satisfied with it because it only appears on the stage 
and should insist on seeing the machinery behind the 
curtains by which it is produced ; or it is as though one 
should refuse to enjoy his dinner unless he can see the 
kettles in which it was prepared. Now the idealist not 
only emphasizes the true reality of the phenomenal, but 
he also believes and shows that it is largely in this realm 
that we find and enjoy the wealth and warmth, the beauty 
and the glory of our life. 



66 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

(lo) It is objected that this theory turns our senses 
into illusion and delusion. Nothing is what it seems, 
but everything is something strangely and absurdly 
different. Would God make us with such deceitful 
senses and mock us with such deception ? It may be 
said in answer to this charge of illusion that, if it is 
true, there is no help for it. We must try to find out and 
put up with what is true, and not be willing to remain 
in the illusion and delusion of error. We are frequently 
finding out that things are different from what they 
seemed. Was God deceiving men when he put them 
in a world in which the sun seemed to move around the 
earth ? Has not God concealed many things in order 
that men may find them out ? All truth is necessarily 
concealed from men until they can learn to use their fac- 
ulties and investigate facts and thus distinguish reality 
from appearance. This is the process through which all 
human knowledge grows. Such illusion is not God 
deceiving men, but God educating men. 

We are not yet prepared, however, to give the true 
answer to this charge of illusion and deception in the 
subjectivity of space. We shall ultimately see that the 
phenomenal objects we experience as spatial forms en- 
dued with sensational qualities are finite reproductions 
and copies of similar mental states or objects in the 
Divine Mind. The things we see are the thoughts of 
God. The fragrant red rose that gratifies us does exist 
as we experience it, but instead of existing in an extended 
insensate world, it exists in the mind of God, and it is the 



THE SUBJECTIVITY OF SPACE 67 

rose in his mind that creates the rose in our mind. 
This fact removes the charge of illusion and deception, 
and shows that the only illusion grows out of a wrong in- 
terpretation of what we experience. 

(11) Many minds find a special difficulty with motion, 
for the subjectivity of space erases this from the onto- 
logical world. The plain man is especially astonished to 
hear that there is no such thing as a really moving body, 
and asks with incredulity, Do you literally mean that I 
am not in motion when I am walking, and that the loco- 
motive rushing by is not really moving ? According to 
the theory we are considering, there can be no motion 
through real space, for there is no real space for any- 
thing to move through. That there is a subjective ele- 
ment in motion is sometimes shown in our experience. 
When we sit in a railway train standing by another train 
on a parallel track and one of the trains begins to 
move, we cannot at first tell whether we are moving or 
whether the other train is moving. Philosophers from 
ancient times have propounded some puzzling questions 
with reference to real motion, such as, How can a body 
in motion be at a given point even for an instant when 
it must every instant be moving away from that point ? 
Motion seems to require that the moving body be, and 
that it be not, at the same point at the same instant. 
But, all these puzzles being left aside, motion in our ex- 
perience resolves itself wholly into a succession of sensa- 
tions, visual, tactile, auditory, and especially muscular, 
and all sensations, as we have seen, are subjective and 



68 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

cannot give us extended realities that are like the sensa- 
tional images. Lotze, in his profound discussion of 
space (" Metaphysics," Book II, Chapter I), shows that 
our sense of space consists of the series of feelings or 
succession of mental states through which we must 
pass to get from one mental state or object of experience 
to another, and these feelings are wholly subjective. 
But while phenomenal motion does not indicate moving 
realities, it does indicate changing relations in realities. 
(12) It may be asked. What would a non-spatial world 
be like ? Is it not inconceivable, and, if it were conceived 
and realized and we found ourselves in such a world, 
would it not frighten us and drive us insane .'' Several 
things may be said in answer to this question. For one 
thing, we cannot form an image or picture of a non- 
spatial world, for all our images are expressed in spatial 
terms, and these terms cannot be applied to spirit. 
The mind forms pictures, but it cannot form a picture 
of itself, and so it cannot picture a world of pure mind. 
For another thing, we do live in a non-spatial world in 
our own minds, which admittedly are non-spatial reality : 
do we find any trouble in getting along with them .-' 
Are we afraid to live in them ? Do we start from our- 
selves as ghosts ? If we are spirit, why are we distressed 
to find the whole material world is spirit also ? We are 
in our native place in our own minds, and we need not 
take fright, but should gain confidence, from the assur- 
ance that even that thing we call matter is also mind. 
This makes the whole world our home. 



THE SUBJECTIVITY OF SPACE 69 

Further light on this question may be gained from 
the world of dreams and of imagination. In our dreams 
we live and act in a world expressed in terms of space, 
and yet such space has no existence outside of our own 
minds and is purely imaginary. The dream world may 
seem just as solid and vivid and real as the world of our 
waking thought, and yet it is purely subjective. The 
mind projects the space forms of this whole world out 
of its own subjectivity: may it not project the space 
forms of its waking experience in a similar way .-' The 
same is true of the world of our imagination. The 
painter sees the picture in the gallery of his own imag- 
ination before he puts it on canvas, and the architect 
creates his building in imagination before he constructs 
it in steel and stone. The space forms of the imaginary 
picture and building are just as exact and vivid as they 
are in the painting and the palace : as the one set of 
space forms is subjective, may not the other set of space 
forms be subjective also .■' As we have no trouble living 
in a dream world and in a world of imagination, may 
we not live with equal ease and assurance in an objective 
world in which the space forms are equally subjective .'' 

But the true answer to this question is that according 
to the theory we are considering we are living in a non- 
spatial world now. There is no other kind of world for 
us to live in, and we are already in a world of pure 
spirit. This fact may come to us as a surprise, as the 
Frenchman was surprised to discover that he had been 
speaking prose all his life. But so it is, according to 



70 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

the theory of the subjectivity of space. Our experience 
of space is only a mode of our conception and not a 
form of ontological reality. We do not experience 
objective space, but we spatialize subjective experience. 
A non-spatial world, then, is not the insubstantial, 
spectral ghost-land we have been imagining, but it is 
just the solid world of earth and flesh we know. We 
need not fear we shall find no place to put our feet and 
no air to breathe, for these are just as real and secure 
in our present phenomenal world as they ever could be 
in an extended world. 

(13) Again it may be asked, What is the need and 
use of such a principle as this .-' Why are we not made 
to apprehend reality as it is in its non-spatial nature and 
not under these apparently illusive space forms ? Why 
are we constituted with such a mode of experience ? 
This question takes us into the purpose of God in fram- 
ing us with our present constitution, and any suggestions 
or guesses at truth we may make in this direction should 
be conceived in a modest spirit. 

We have already intimated that space forms are not 
uncaused and arbitrary modes of our experience, but 
correspond with relations in ontological realities. This 
is a self-evident proposition, resting directly on the 
axiom that every change must have an appropriate 
cause. However diverse, then, space forms may be 
from the realities they represent, the forms are oc- 
casioned by the realities and change with them. This 
fact suggests that space forms are symbols or language 



THE SUBJECTIVITY OF SPACE 71 

to represent and picture the activities of the mind, or 
the life of the spirit. As such they express the logical 
relations of mental entities and activities. The ideas of 
cause and effect and of plan and purpose are largely 
represented in pictorial form in spatial images. " Art," 
says Hegel, "has the vocation of reveahng the truth in 
the form of sensuous artistic shape." Space is the great 
artist, making distinct and graphic and vivid the plan of 
the world, the inner logical relations that are the skele- 
ton and framework of the world of spirit 

Space images are also the common language, first, 
between us and God. Whether God thinks in space 
terms in his own inner life or not, he certainly does ex- 
press his thoughts to us in space terms. Earth and sea 
and sky, flower and forest, are the grand picture language 
in which he speaks to us. " The heavens declare the 
glory of God, and the firmanent sheweth his handy- 
work." And when he speaks to us through our reason 
and conscience or through the personal whisperings of 
his Spirit, his revelations are framed in spatial images. 
Thus the space world is the common ground between 
us and God through which communication and fellow- 
ship are held and we live in harmony with him. 

This space form is also the foundation and framework 
of the world that is common to us human beings. It is 
through this language that we speak and carry on our 
social life. We understand one another by calling up 
spatial images in words, or, when there are no words 
common to us, in spatial signs, and such signs are 



72 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

understood around the world. Deprive us of space 
images and we would be reduced to a state of isolation 
and incommunicability far beyond that in which we 
would be if every word of our common language were 
lost. 

But a still deeper reason may be suggested for the 
spatial form of our experience. Space images are the 
language in which we express and develop our thoughts 
for ourselves. Language is almost as necessary for our 
own inner life as for our sociallife. Professor Max Miiller 
maintains that we could not think at all without words. 
" To think," he says, " is to speak low, and to speak is 
to think aloud." Without words we might still think in 
a rudimentary degree, but our mental world would lose 
definiteness and vividness and be inconceivably impov- 
erished. Its intricate relations would disappear, and it 
would be reduced to a few elementary concepts. 

A striking illustration of this fact is seen in mathe- 
matics. The mathematician constructs a vast system 
of mathematical quantities and relations. This world is 
wholly mental and subjective; its objects and relations 
are produced in the mind by its own activity. In order 
that the mathematician may create this world, he must 
invent symbols to represent his objects. Without these 
he could carry in his mind only a few simple relations. 
But by the use of his a's and b's and x's andj^'s and his 
whole mathematical apparatus, he carries his mental 
creations to an indefinite extent and elaborates a system 
of enormous intricacy, great beauty and practical in- 



THE SUBJECTIVITY OF SPACE 73 

finity. In these mental creations the human mind ex- 
ercises its highest genius and appears to approach the 
creative work of God. This mathematical world would 
not be possible to our minds without these symbolic 
helps. And yet the symbols are no essential part of 
the mathematical relations : they represent the reality 
but are not the reality. They are only modes of pic- 
turing the relations so as to make them easily com- 
prehensible and manageable. So, also, language is 
not thought, but only represents thought, and pictures 
are not the realities they represent, but only images of 
them. 

Do not these illustrations give us a hint of the nature 
and use of space .'' What is this but a symbol and lan- 
guage to give definiteness and vividness to our thoughts 
and enable us to carry them out into profound and com- 
plicated systems .■' We have thoughts and feelings in 
which space images scarcely enter, but these are com- 
paratively elementary and vague, although very impor- 
tant, and if our mental life were reduced to these, it 
would fall to a low level, even to a far lower level than 
if it were deprived of language. It is the intuition of 
space that furnishes the mind with images or endows it 
with its picture-making power. Space is the framework 
and coloring of imagination. It is this that enables us 
to give our thoughts a spread-out form and frame them 
in definite outlines of endless shapes and depict them in 
rich colors. And thus it is our space intuition that 
turns our imagination into a picture gallery hung not 



74 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

only with nature's masterpieces of field and flower, sea 
and sky, that is, with God's thoughts, but also with pic- 
tures of our own thoughts. It illustrates and illuminates 
our thoughts as pictures illustrate a book. We try to 
get our subtlest and most abstract thoughts into images 
or spatial pictures, and do not think we have clearly 
grasped them until we have framed them into this form. 
Space images make our thought-world enormously more 
intricate and delicate in its relations and vastly richer 
and more splendid. Take away our space intuition, 
and our mental life would be infinitely impoverished and 
rendered vague and dull, a bleak and barren world. 

Furthermore, the intuition of space, as it gives form 
to our touch-movement sensations, is the language in 
which we chiefly express our volitions and sense of lib- 
erty and power. We would still have some sense of 
liberty without the sensation of motion, but it would then 
be greatly restricted. The sense of space as giving 
form to our touch-movement sensations lets our will out 
into a boundless field, full of strenuous action and of all 
possibilities of attainment. Space is thus the language 
in which the will speaks, the symbol by which it builds 
its vast world of action. 

Professor A. T. Ormond has worked this suggestion 
out in a fruitful way. Space, according to his view, is 
our experience of the repulsive^ forces resident in the 
germinal units of the spiritual world, and it expresses 
their resistance to our control. In proportion as we can 
exercise control over things, they seem near to us. We 



THE SUBJECTIVITY OF SPACE 75 

have the greatest degree of control over our own mental 
states, for they are immanent in our minds and immedi- 
ately subject to our will. As a consequence they seem 
nearest to us, so near, in fact, that the spatial relation 
vanishes and our thoughts become constituent ele- 
ments of ourselves. The next nearest sphere of con- 
trol is our body, which is responsive to our will only 
slightly less than our thoughts, and so seems almost 
as near to us. From the body things shade off in ever 
enlarging spheres of lessening control until they almost 
entirely escape us and seem indefinitely far. Yet if we 
could exercise the same immediate control over things 
beyond the sea, or even over the sun and stars, as we 
can over our bodily organs and our thoughts, the one 
class of objects would seem as near to us as the other. 
But our control over objects decreases as the distance 
increases, and it is this decrease of control that causes 
or expresses itself in the seeming increase of distance. 
We are where we can act. God's control over things 
is absolutely immediate and universal, and this is his 
omnipresence and omnipotence. Gravitation decreases 
as the square of the distance, and thus obeys the same 
law as our will, and is thereby assimilated to will. The 
significance of this fact will be appreciated when we 
come to study the world as a manifestation of will, in 
Chapter VIII. 

In line with these speculations is the suggestion that, 
as our space intuition is subjective in, and relative to, our 
minds, it is possible that there may be other minds con- 



76 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

stituted with different space intuitions. We experience 
space in three dimensions and can have no sense experi- 
ence of any other dimension. But the mathematicians 
extend the principles and analogies of the three dimen- 
sions of length, breadth, and thickness into a fourth 
dimension, and so on into an nth. dimension. These 
hyperspaces have been profoundly investigated and 
worked out into hypergeometries that are thoroughly 
consistent and wonderfully interesting and beautiful.^ 
The metaphysician, with his doctrine of the subjectivity 
of space, has room in his world for the mathematician's 
hyperspaces in possible minds that are constituted with 
space intuitions to produce them. 

This immense power and use of the space intuition as 
the language of our thoughts for communicating with 
God and with one another and for the expression and 
enrichment of our own inner life, appears to be the rea- 
son why it enters into our subjective constitution. 

(14) Perhaps after all this reasoning the plain man 
may bluntly ask the author whether he really believes 
in the subjectivity of space, and demand a categorical 
answer ; and perhaps he has a right to ask the question 
and expect a frank reply. The author's personal opinion 
is of slight consequence to any one ; the mere authority 
of even the greatest thinker is of small weight ; only 
reason has a right to be heard in this matter, and these 
reasons must speak for themselves. Every one must 

1 A clear exposition of these higher geometries will be found in " Sci- 
ence and Hypothesis," by H. Poincare. 



THE SUBJECTIVITY OF SPACE 77 

look at them for himself and come to his own conclu- 
sion : only he should endeavor to look at them with un- 
biased judgment and strain his vision to see the truth. 
The author makes bold to say this : these reasons seem 
to him to establish the subjectivity of space as against 
any other theory. This view stands the test of our 
critical thought, and any other goes to pieces under criti- 
cism. Yet one may hesitate to affirm positively and 
finally that this theory represents absolute truth. *' The 
world is too much with us " in philosophy as in religion, 
and at times we must doubt whether we have actually 
lifted the veil that hides the mystery of existence. 
Nevertheless, we must follow our thought, and this leads 
to the subjectivity of space ; and therefore we hold this 
in our present light as our nearest approach to the 
nature of ultimate reality. 



CHAPTER V 
THE SUBJECTIVITY OF TIME 

The subjectivity of space carries with it the subjec- 
tivity of time. If there is no extended world of matter, 
but only a world of spirit and experience, then time as 
an external succession of extended things has vanished 
along with such things. Idealists, therefore, almost 
without exception, group space and time together as 
subjective experiences. Kant applies substantially the 
same arguments to time as to space in proving them in- 
tuitions of the mind. 

They do belong together as subjective states of mind, 
but there is a fundamental difference between them, 
which Kant recognized by denominating space as the 
sense of the outer, and time as the sense of the inner, 
life. Space is the form which consciousness imposes 
on its sensational objects, and has no other existence. 
There is nothing really extended either in the mind or 
out of it, and extension is only a projection of the mind's 
own consciousness. Time, however, is not a form or 
mode imposed by the mind on its own experience, but 
is an inherent and essential relation of its inner states. 
These states of experience constitute the soul, and are 
the only reality we immediately know. An important 
fact about these states is that they exist in the time 

78 



THE SUBJECTIVITY OF TIME 79 

relation. They are successive ; they begin and they 
cease to be. One is followed by another, and taken 
together they form a constant stream of succession. 
This fact of inner succession is one of which we are 
immediately aware. It is not the result of reasoning 
or inference, but is an intuition. Nothing can be clearer 
and surer to us than that our thoughts begin and con- 
tinue for a period of duration and then cease, or dissolve 
into others. Succession clings to our subjective experi- 
ences as an essential and ineradicable relation. We 
cannot erase or expunge it from our experience. All of 
our experiences are successive, and we can no more get 
rid of this relation than we can get rid of thought itself. 
Our experience of space is not spatial, but our experience 
of time is temporal ; that is, our experience of a mile is 
not a mile long, but our experience of an hour is an 
hour long. Space is a phenomenon to the mind; time 
is not a phenomenon, but a reality in the mind itself. 
Time is our experience of succession, and if there were 
no succession in our minds, our thoughts could neither 
begin nor end, and our consciousness, instead of be- 
ing a ceaseless flow or stream, would stand fixed in 
rigidity. 

The subjectivity of time is further seen in the fact 
that it is not a regular flow at a fixed rate, but varies 
widely and surprisingly with the kind and the degree of 
our interest. The period we call an hour or a day does 
not always seem to be of the same duration. If we are 
enjoying a pleasure, it may seem incredibly short, and 



8o THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

if we are suffering intense pain, it may seem intolerably 
long. Listening to a sermon, we may think half an 
hour interminable, and listening to a song, we may think 
it all too short. So absorbed may we be in a subject or 
experience that we do not note the lapse of time at all, 
and a whole evening may seem as a moment, and a 
week or a year as swift as an arrow. These familiar ex- 
periences show us that time is not a fixed rate of succes- 
sion, but is relative to our interest and is rapid and short, 
or slow and long, according to our attention to its flow. 
Further light is thrown upon the time relation by a 
consideration of the time-span of our consciousness, a 
subject that has been developed by Professor Josiah Royce 
in his work on " The World and the Individual." The 
interval during which an object is present to our con- 
sciousness is not an absolute instant or mathematical 
line dividing the future from the past, for such instant 
or line would be no time at all, and nothing could be 
known in it. There is an appreciable interval during 
which consciousness holds before itself all the objects 
or the whole succession of objects in the interval. Pro- 
fessor Royce estimates this interval or " time-span " as 
"a very few moments" or "seconds." The succession 
of events in this interval must not be either too fast 
or too slow in order that we may perceive them. Thus 
the several notes of a musical phrase or the words of 
a sentence are present to the mind, not only successively 
as they flow from the future into the past, but also 
simultaneously while the mind grasps them as a whole 



THE SUBJECTIVITY OF TIME 8l 

and realizes their meaning. It is the length of this 
time-span that determines the type of our consciousness 
as to what successions it can grasp and what is our sense of 
time. But our time-span is not a period that is necessary 
and universal for all minds, but is relative to us and might 
be widely different. We can conceive an infinitesimally 
short or an immensely long time-span that would per- 
ceive very rapid or very slow changes not perceivable 
by our time-sense, and this would give a very different 
type of consciousness. " Suppose," says Professor Royce, 
** that our conciousness had to a thousand millionth of 
a second, or to a million of years of time, the same re- 
lation that it now has to the arbitrary length in seconds 
of a typical present moment. Then, in the one case, 
we might say : ' What a slow affair this dynamite ex- 
plosion is ! ' In the other case, events, such as the wear- 
ing of the Niagara gorge, would be to us what a single 
musicalphrase now is, namely, something instantaneously 
present, and grasped within the arbitrary present 
moment. Such relations to time would be no more 
arbitrary, no less conscious, no more or less fluent, and 
no more or less full of possible meaning, than is now 
our conscious life." ^ 

Now let all limitations be removed from this time-span, 
or let it be extended to eternity, and we have a conscious- 
ness that grasps all events from everlasting to everlasting 
and holds them together in their unity, the omniscient 
consciousness of God. " For a thousand years in thy 

^ " The World and the Individual," pages 227-228. 
G 



82 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in 
the night." In such a consciousness there is succession, 
but no sense of time after our type, for all events, though 
they are logically successive, are also simultaneous, or 
held together in their unified meaning ; and to God 
eternity is an eternal Now. In the scale of being there 
is room for time-spans of any number and length, each 
determining its own type of consciousness. The sense 
of time, therefore, is not the same for all minds, but 
varies with the breadth of their time-span. 

As we interpreted space as the extent of our experience 
of control, so we may interpret time as the extent of 
our experience of succession. The present is the point 
of our most intense experience, and events seem distant 
from us in the past in proportion as they grow less and 
less vivid and fade into dimness and oblivion. But if 
past events, however dim or wholly forgotten they may 
have become, were again realized in their original inten- 
sity, they would be just as present to us as they ever 
were, for they would repeat in our experience all the 
sensations and thoughts with which we first experienced 
them. In like manner, if it were possible for us to ex- 
perience the events of the future with the same vividness 
as that with which we shall realize them, they would 
now be present to us. A longer time-span means that 
events remain vivid in experience under a wider view or 
grasp of consciousness ; and in God's mind all things 
continue in unchanging vividness from eternity to 
eternity in one ever-present Now. As God's immediate 



THE SUBJECTIVITY OF TIME 83 

and universal experience of control is his omnipresence 
and omnipotence, so his immediate and universal ex- 
perience of succession is his omniscience. 

All of these considerations show us that time is a 
mental experience, subjective in mind, and has no other 
existence. Yet, while time is real, we may easily inter- 
pret or conceive it in an unreal and illusive way. We 
must not think of time as something that stretches out 
behind us in the past and before us in the future. There 
is no such spatial world it can reach through. Time is 
always present, the experience of succession, and there 
is no existing past or future except as a thought-relation 
in the present. 



CHAPTER VI 

SUBJECTIVE REALITY 

Flower in the crannied wall, 

I pluck you out of the crannies, 

I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 

Little flower — but if I could understand 

What you are, root and all, and all in all, 

I should know what God and man is. 

— Tennyson. 

" Give me where I may stand," exclaimed Archimedes, 
"and I will move the world." " Give me a bit of reality," 
says the metaphysician, " and I will show you the uni- 
verse." This poll sto, or standing-place, where we may 
rest our lever to move the world, this original and rep- 
resentative bit of reality that will reveal to us the uni- 
verse, we find in our own soul. " I think, therefore I 
am," said Descartes, and thus found in himself a solid 
ground of reality on which to stand and a center from 
which to sweep the circumference of the universe. We 
may go far off for what is near at hand ; we may vainly 
search the earth and the heavens for what is nigh us, 
even in our heart. 

Let us now take a look into our own soul that we may 
see in this microcosm of the self the image of the mac- 
rocosm of the world, as in a dewdrop we may see all the 
mechanism and wonders of the sun. This chapter only 

84 



SUBJECTIVE REALITY 85 

aims at presenting the slightest elementary sketch map 
of the large and wealthy field of psychology, which in 
recent years has been the subject of such fruitful study 
and has given birth to a literature so voluminous and 
rich. 

I. The Soul's Knowledge of Itself 

The soul knows itself. It is immediately aware of its 
own states and of itself as knowing these states. It uses 
no intermediate means, such as the senses, in knowing 
itself, but is in direct relation with the object known and 
is itself the object known. These mental states are the 
only object thus known to us immediately. All external 
objects are known to us mediately, through their play 
upon our senses, producing in us their phenomena. It 
is by a process of inference that we pass from the sub- 
jective phenomena to the objective noumena, an inference 
that is universal, necessary, and instinctive, but none the 
less an inferential and interpretative process, as we shall 
see later on. But it is by no such process that we know 
the subjective phenomena and all subjective states them- 
selves : they are known by direct intuition. 

As a consequence of this fact, our knowledge of the 
self is the clearest and most certain knowledge we have. 
This knowledge may quickly become mixed and muddied 
with inferences that are widely wrong, but our awareness 
or consciousness of our mental states themselves is abso- 
lutely sure and free from error. We may not be able to 
describe these states in words, we may be egregiously 



86 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

wrong in our interpretation of them, but our experience 
of them is an ultimate fact. If we do not know the soul, 
we do not know anything ; and if we do not know any- 
thing else, we do know the soul. 

From this intuitive knowledge of our personal self, 
there follows the great conclusion that in the soul we 
know reality itself. We know external objects through 
the mediation of the senses that present to us phenomena 
or appearances, which we endeavor to interpret and, if 
possible, resolve back in their noumena or realities, — 
a process that is the task of metaphysics. No such pro- 
cess of mediation takes place in the soul's knowledge of 
itself, and therefore in this self-knowledge there are 
no phenomena, but only noumena. Our experiences, 
thoughts, feelings, volitions, considered in themselves 
apart from their objective reference and interpretation, 
are not appearances to us of realities that lie back of 
them, but are just what they seem. We are not looking 
at them through senses or processes that can transform 
them into phenomena, but we are ourselves these very 
states. They do not, therefore, appear to us under any 
transformed shape, but they exist in consciousness in 
their own form. They are not something apart from 
consciousness which consciousness is viewing, but they 
are consciousness itself. They are not symbols or shad- 
ows of something beyond them, but are ultimate reality. 
Here we reach essential reality, a core of pure being that 
cannot be resolved into phenomena or illusion or any- 
thing else than itself. 



SUBJECTIVE REALITY 87 

This is a fact of tremendous importance in our search 
for reality. The metaphysician has often ransacked the 
heavens for the secret of being while stumbling over 
it in his own soul. If our conclusion is correct, we 
have in our own soul the point where we may rest 
our lever that will move the world. Here is the bit 
of reality that will show us the stuff of the universe. 
In plucking this "flower" from its "crannied wall" 
and knowing it "root and all," we "know what God 
and man is." ' Say not in thine heart, Who shall as- 
cend into heaven } Or, Who shall descend into the 
deep ? The world is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and 
in thy heart.' 

It may be remarked, in passing, that the view that is 
taken of the relation of our subjective states to reality is 
one of the turning points in the history of philosophy. 
Kant maintained that our conscious states are phenom- 
ena of an unknown and unknowable " thing-in-itself " or 
ultimate reality, the things of nature being in the same 
way phenomena of unknowable " things-in-themselves " 
— which was the view of Herbert Spencer. Descartes 
started with his thinking self as a bit of indubitable re- 
ality, and Schopenhauer firmly grasped the fact that we 
know reality itself in our own internal states of idea and 
of will (in his "The World as Will and as Idea"), and 
these thinkers made it the corner stone of idealistic phi- 
losophy, where it remains to this day. 

Our conscious states exist in a relation of succession, 
or "stream of consciousness." The word "stream " in 



88 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

this connection is figurative. We must not suppose that 
anything flows in a stream in the mind from one point to 
another, for there are no spatial points in the mind. All 
that is meant by this word is that our mental states exist 
in succession, and it expresses this fact with picturesque 
vividness. 

One or two important features of this stream may 
here be considered. It varies in breadth and depth. 
Its breadth varies with its development and the extent of 
its knowledge and culture. Education, books, science, 
art, philosophy, rehgion, broaden the stream of the soul. 
Its depth varies with the degree or intensity of its con- 
sciousness. When all the powers of the soul are 
aroused, as when we are stirred with burning thoughts 
and intense feelings, the stream of consciousness is alive 
to its lowest deeps and rises to the flood tide of its inten- 
sity. At other times our consciousness grows dim and 
indistinct and its tide falls to a low level. In sleep it 
seems almost to disappear, and under the power of 
disease or of an anaesthetic it seems absolutely to vanish 
and leave not a trace behind. 

This raises the question of what becomes of our con- 
sciousness in these conditions and of whether there is 
an absolutely unconscious deep in our minds out of which 
our conscious thoughts rise and into which they sink. 
The theory of "unconscious cerebration" and of a 
"subliminal self" has been a favorite one with some 
psychologists. It is contended that the mind keeps 
working on in a wholly unconscious state, rising to the 



SUBJECTIVE REALITY 89 

edge or threshold of consciousness in dreams and emerg- 
ing into full self-consciousness in our waking hours. 
But the very nature of mind as far as we can know it is 
consciousness, and " unconscious mind " seems a con- 
tradiction in terms. It is sufficient to suppose that con- 
sciousness falls to a low level without ever losing its essen- 
tial nature. In sleep the mind ordinarily keeps working 
on in some degree, as is experienced in dreams ; and even 
in the deeper sleep of the anaesthetic we may suppose 
there is still a dim thread of consciousness. But the 
stream has sunk to a mere rivulet, and the links of 
memory are too slender and frail to preserve any recol- 
lection of it. Mind is still conscious to its lowest deeps, 
though such consciousness is elemental and its memory 
evanescent. 

Thus the stream of consciousness is like a river, rising 
in a tiny spring in far-away hills and gathering into itself 
tributary streams of knowledge and experience by which 
it fills an ever broader channel ; and at times swelling 
into a great flood and at other times dwindling to a riv- 
ulet in the bottom of its bed. But as the river through 
all its changes is still water, with all the qualities of 
water, so the soul through all its variations in breadth 
and depth is still mind, with the qualities of mind. 
How the soul's stream of consciousness thus swells to a 
surging flood and shrinks to a slender rill is a mystery 
we cannot fathom. 

At this point the question arises : What is the soul? 
Is it simply the stream and the sum of our conscious 



90 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

states in their unity ? Or is there some substance of 
which these states are the attributes, some entity back 
of the states, some core of being in which they inhere ? 
Is the soul pure thought, feeUng, will, or must there not 
be something that thinks and feels and wills ? Our first 
thought is likely to be that of course there is something 
that thinks and feels and wills, and that this something 
is an entity apart from or other than these states. But 
modern psychologists and metaphysicians generally 
discard the theory of such an entity apart from con- 
sciousness and view the stream or unity of our experi- 
ence as the soul. 

The matter may be illustrated by an analogous case. 
Does a material thing, such as an orange or a stone, 
have any entity or substance other than its qualities ? 
It is possessed or consists of the qualities of color, 
sound, odor, taste, and touch : if we could abstract these 
each and all so that the orange or the stone would no 
longer affect us in any of these ways, would anything be 
left ? What would that be which we could not see, hear, 
smell, taste, or touch, which could not resist us or in any 
way affect us or make its presence and power known ? 
The most elusive material thing we know is the lumi- 
niferous ether, and yet it affects our senses powerfully. 
It would seem that an entity that cannot do anything is 
about the same as no entity at all. Now the case is 
somewhat similar with the soul. We know the soul as 
thought, feeling, and volition. If we abstract these 
states, what is left ? Is there left an entity that cannot 



SUBJECTIVE REALITY 91 

think, feel, or will, or in any way act so as to make its 
presence known ? Then it would seem that such an 
entity could play no part in our life, and would be the 
same as no entity at all. 

But still the question recurs : What, then, is the soul ? 
What is it that thinks and feels and wills ? The psy- 
chologist answers that the soul is our experience in its 
unity ; it is just the soul we know, and we have no knowl- 
edge and no need of any other. It is the nature of the 
soul to be conscious experience, and when we have found 
or experienced this, we are not to try to peep behind the 
scenes for some hard core or bony skeleton there. The 
soul is experience clear back and down through all its 
chambers and regions, and there is no insensate sub- 
stance to which it clings or unconscious deep into which 
it sinks. Wherein consists the unity of our conscious 
experience, how our soul can exist as a stream or suc- 
cession of ideas, feelings, and volitions is, indeed, a 
mystery. But we do not help this mystery by bringing 
in an unknowing, unknown, and unknowable something 
and planting it as an unrelated and foreign core or 
lump in the midst of this conscious stream. If con- 
sciousness cannot stand as a reality in itself, but must 
have another reality or substance to stand under it, 
then this reality must have another substance to stand 
under it, and so on in an endless regression. The 
conscious reality we do know, but the unconscious 
entity we do not know and do not need, and therefore 
we do not posit its existence. 



92 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

2. The Fundamental Faculties of the Soul 

A single introspective glance into the soul shows us 
that it is not a level and monotonous country, but is di- 
versified into many features and is a complex and 
wealthy world. It falls at once into three fundamental 
faculties or modes of experience : thought, feeling, and 
will. 

(i) Thought is the perceptive and constructive fac- 
ulty of the mind. It receives the stimuli of the senses 
and shapes them into objects of thought, or mental 
constructs ; it builds its own materials into ideas, ends 
and means, purposes and plans ; and it discerns or con- 
stitutes the meaning of its objects of thought. 

In this process the mind imposes its own regulative 
principles or constructive ideas on its sense materials, 
after the same manner in which it imposes upon them 
its intuitions of space and time. The sense materials 
pour in upon the mind in an unorganized mass, a 
tumultuous and chaotic flood, and the mind must mold 
them into form and meaning and build them into system. 
How does the mind get the idea of unity ? Not from 
these manifold and confused sense impressions ; but it 
has the idea or principle of unity in its own unitary ex- 
perience or consciousness, and, having this idea, it im- 
poses it upon its sense impressions and reads them in 
their unity. In a similar way, the mind would not be 
able to understand plurality in sense materials if it did 
not already have this idea in its own manifold experience. 



SUBJECTIVE REALITY 93 

From sense materials the mind could never know 
the principle of causality ; it could only be aware of 
succession. But it knows cause in its own will, and 
effects in its own consciousness, and it transfers the idea 
of causality thus internally derived to outer successions. 

So it is with all the regulative principles or basic ideas 
of the soul. The mind can see outwardly only what it 
first sees inwardly. Consciousness necessarily supplies 
its own molds in which it casts into form the inflowing 
stream of sensation, and thus it gives shape and mean- 
ing to its sense materials and builds them into an orderly 
and significant world. These regulative and construc- 
tive molds of the mind are^^not merely names or concepts 
of classes into which the mind groups its experiences, 
but are fundamental modes of its operation, or are its 
dynamic constitution. 

Kant enumerated twelve of these inner principles or 
" categories " of the mind, arranging them in groups of 
three under the four heads of quantity, quality, relation, 
and modality. His classification was faulty, and, in 
truth, he paid little respect to it himself. But the im- 
portant point in this connection is that Kant was the 
first to show that these categories are constitutional in 
the mind, the necessary contribution which the mind 
itself makes to thought and to world-building. This is 
his immortal discovery in philosophy, and it is a principle 
that stands and must ever stand immovable, for it is 
rooted in the foundations of the mind itself. It is also a 
principle that will be seen to be of the deepest and 



94 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

most far-reaching significance when we come to the 
process of world construction and interpretation. 

(2) Feeling floods the objects which the mind thus 
constructs with their tone of pleasure or pain and with 
the qualities of interest and worth, thus imposing its 
moral categories upon them and determining their value. 
If the objects of the mind were pure blank intellectual 
perceptions or constructs, the mind would have no in- 
terest in them, no craving or desire with reference to 
them, would perceive no worth or obligation in them, 
and would be equally indifferent towards them all. But 
these objects appeal to and stir up the emotions, crav- 
ings, desires, impulses, and passions, and thus begin to 
throb and glow with interest, worth, obligation, passion- 
ate impulse, or the reverse of these qualities. They 
burn with joy or grief, hope or fear, love or hate, and 
thus constitute all the many colored variety and wealth 
and splendor of our emotional life. And it is these 
emotions that are the motor power in objects that drives 
them into action. 

(3) The will is the executive faculty of the soul. It 
gives the decision or command that lets the motive 
powers loose and sends thought and feeling rushing into 
deeds. It is the soul in action, and it is this sovereign 
power that achieves all the ends and attainments, hero- 
ism, triumphs, and glory of our human world. 

This trinity of nature in the soul is deep-seated and 
all-pervasive in its experience. It is an elementary and 
fundamental classification of our inner life, and is under- 



SUBJECTIVE REALITY 95 

stood on the street as well as in the schools. It needs 
only to be remarked that we are not to suppose that 
there is anything in the nature of a spatial division in 
the soul corresponding to these three functions. They 
are each a function of the whole soul : the soul in its 
indivisible unity acts in these three modes. These 
fundamental faculties of intellect, sensibility, and will in 
their totality and unity constitute our personality. 

With this general view of the soul's experience before 
us, we may now take a more detailed view of this inner 
world. 

3. Objects of Experience 

An object of experience is anything that engages the 
attention of the mind. The general field of conscious- 
ness breaks into a great multiplicity and variety of parts, 
and any one of these may be isolated from the others 
and viewed as a unit. Such objects of experience are 
primarily states of mind, or objects of thought included 
within consciousness, and may be viewed as such, apart 
from any objective reference they may have. In the 
present chapter we are considering these objects of ex- 
perience as subjective states, and their objective reference 
will come up in the next chapter. There are various 
kinds of objects of experience, and we shall enumerate 
the most important ones. 

(i) First in order of time are objects of sense per- 
ception. The excitations of the senses cause objects to 
arise in the mind. In response to these influences from 



96 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

without, the mind erects and projects the external world. 
These resulting sense perceptions or states of conscious- 
ness are phenomena when viewed in relation to their ob- 
jective causes, for they are appearances of unlike realities. 
But they are noumena or ultimate realities when viewed 
in relation to the mind itself, for they are states of con- 
sciousness which are realities in themselves and not in 
appearance. 

The mind shapes its sense excitations into objects 
under the action of the categories, as already explained. 
An apple stimulates the eye and excites in the mind its 
visual image of form and color ; the other senses contrib- 
ute their several reports or sense images of the apple, 
and it acquires sonance, odor, taste, and resistance. These 
five sense images all blend into a unity, which is the 
mental construct of the apple, or the apple itself as we 
know it. All the things we know, including the whole 
world of nature, are thus constructed in the mind and 
are states of experience. As an object is perceived by 
the senses, it falls into the framework of, and is illuminated 
by, the mind's existing stock of knowledge, a process that 
is called apperception. The new knowledge also reacts 
upon the old. The two at first may be antagonistic and 
strive desperately to expel each other, but at length they 
work themselves into mutual adjustment and harmony. 
Our sense perceptions are thus absorbed and assimilated 
into our general mass of knowledge, and in this way the 
mind grows. Every object, from the first germ of its 
sense perception to its finished construct, is a growth. 



SUBJECTIVE REALITY 97 

(2) Next in order are objects of memory. The mind 
has the power of reviving experiences that have faded 
and vanished. These revived states are dimmer and 
weaker than their originals, but they are as truly objects 
of experience as the originals themselves. 

(3) But the mind not only contains objects that were 
impressed upon it or excited within it from without : it 
has creative powers of its own ; and next in order are 
objects of constructive thought and of imagination. 
Constructive thought reasons upon the materials in the 
mind, sifting and arranging them, comparing them and 
combining them into judgments, drawing inferences, 
tracing causes and consequences, and thus reaching new 
conclusions and building systems of science and philos- 
ophy. We have already remarked upon the mathe- 
matical world as an instance of construction by the mind 
approaching absolute creation. The mind posits a few 
principles and definitions and proceeds to build them into 
a vast world stretching away into the infinite. Such 
mathematical relations are objects of pure thought, and 
to think them is to create them, a process which is prob- 
ably the nearest human approach to divine creation. 
Music is another vast and grand world which is built 
by constructive thought. Imagination is also a power- 
ful architect of objects of experience. It takes all 
kinds of materials, sense perceptions, ideas, feelings, 
and frames, and molds them into new forms after its own 
ideals, and thus result all the achievements and glories 
of literature and art. 



98 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

(4) The next in order are objects of meaning. Ob- 
jects of sense perception are symbolic representations of 
objective realities, and the function of the mind in them 
is only to secure accuracy in the sense process, so that 
the inner will correspond with the outer as closely as 
possible. This process of reproduction may be viewed 
as one of mental mechanism, having only to make an 
exact copy, as a photograph reproduces a likeness. 
Memory objects also approach their ideal as they faith- 
fully reproduce their originals. But in the building of 
objects of constructive thought and creative imagination, 
there is no pattern to follow, but these objects are shaped 
by the mind itself, and a large subjective element thus 
enters into their construction. This subjective element 
becomes dominant and constitutive in objects of meaning. 
Meaning is what we intend an object to embody and 
express. A simple instance is the meaning of a word : 
such a meaning depends on our definition of the word, 
what we determine it shall signify. In forming a word, 
we create an object and embed its significance and pur- 
pose in it. We erect the object in the mind as the em- 
bodiment and expression of an idea, belief, intention. 
The whole world of language, including mathematical 
symbols and all systems of notation, is such a creation. 
Our principles of character and conduct, moral and spir- 
itual ideals, political platforms, religious creeds, friend- 
ships, patriotism, literature, and art, are objects of mean- 
ing in that we set them up and determine what they 
shall be. Civilization largely consists in meaning, and 



SUBJECTIVE REALITY 99 

this is a measure of its progress. A sense object, such 
as a bank note or a book, may be the same to a savage 
and to a civilized man, but it is a vastly different object 
of meaning to the two men. Our inner life is largely 
meaning, and meaning is something we make. 

(5) Closely related to objects of meaning are objects 
of will or purpose. When a meaning assumes the defi- 
nite form of a purpose, we have an object of will. 
Such an object is a deed which the mind resolves to do, 
an end which it is determined to reach. It may be triv- 
ial and brief as a passing whim, or weighty and far- 
reaching as a life ambition ; and it may be so instinctive 
that it scarcely emerges into consciousness, or it may be 
the most vividly conscious and clearly reasoned purpose 
of the soul. 

An object of will, like all other objects of experience, 
grows. It starts with a germ of perception or plan, 
impulse, appetite, or passion, and then grows by gather- 
ing into itself all the reasons that support it, all the 
materials in the mind and heart that have kinship with 
it. Mental associations feed it. The mind puts an ob- 
ject of will under the focus of attention, and then all 
kindred thoughts, feelings, desires, purposes, gravitate 
towards it ; it acts as a magnet to draw them to it, and 
thus it increases in mass and weight and power until it 
overcomes all opposition and rushes into action. A 
volition is thus a desire or purpose that grows until it is 
stronger than all antagonistic motives and tips the scale 
in its favor. The mind has large control over this pro- 



lOO THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

cess, for it can concentrate its attention on an object of 
will and intensify the reasons for or against it, and thus 
do much towards determining the scale one way or the 
other. 

(6) A highly important class of objects are objects of 
feeling. Feeling is an element that enters into the con- 
stitution of all objects of experience, but they may also 
be viewed with special reference to this element. Some 
objects are almost (but never altogether) constituted of 
pure feeling, as vaguely located sensations of physical 
pain ; others, such as the emotions and sentiments, are 
the accompanying excitement or tonal coloring of 
thoughts and purposes, the deep rich vibrations emitted 
by the sounding board of feeling when the strings of 
thought are struck. Some objects have as their main 
purpose the embodiment and expression of feeling. 
The means by which friendship and affection are mani- 
fested, such as loving gifts and words and deeds, are 
predominately objects of feeling. The simplest thing, 
like Wordsworth's " meanest flower that blows," may 
"give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." 
Objects of art aim at the expression of feelings in their 
highest, most refined, and most powerful forms. Poetry, 
painting, sculpture, music, are rich and splendid embodi- 
ments of feeling that send waves of emotion surging 
through all souls that are tuned into harmony with 
them. 

It is these feelings, as we have already remarked, that 
give objects their interest and worth and obligation. 



SUBJECTIVE REALITY lOI 

There is no object so coldly intellectual that it does not 
have some slight warmth of feeling that makes it inter- 
esting to those who have affinity with it; and other 
objects, such as patriotism and friendship, derive their 
power from the passion that burns in them. Conscience, 
in its emotional element, is the feeling of moral worth 
and obligation. Religion is the feeling of dependence 
on and fellowship with God. These objects have intel- 
lectual outlines that give them shape and feature, but it 
is feeling that fills out these skeletons with flesh and 
blood and makes them warm and attractive with life. 

(7) The highest class of objects, from some points of 
view, are generalized objects, or universal laws. An 
object may be a particular and even a unique thing, as a 
particular horse or the greatest race horse in the world. 
But an object may also stand as a type of other objects 
of the same kind or class, and then what we affirm of 
it becomes true of all the members of its class, and this 
fact or relation is a generalized object, concept, or law. 
How can we thus pass from the particular to the gen- 
eral ; on what basis can we rest a law ? This question is 
of immense importance, for it is by this process that we 
form the practical rules for our daily guidance and also 
lay the foundations and build the structures of our 
sciences. From one instance of experience within our 
own minds, possibly occupying only a moment, we draw 
a conclusion that profoundly affects our whole life or 
spin a web of thought out over the whole universe ; 
from the narrowest basis in our brains we rear a fabric 



I02 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

that overtops the stars. This is the greatest power and 
most splendid achievement of the human mind, and must 
ever affect us with wonder. Any element of doubt in- 
serted into the base of this fundamental process must 
have a far-reaching influence, possibly throwing our 
conduct into confusion and shaking down the very 
heavens, as a minute error in the beginning of a math- 
ematical calculation may cause an enormous error in the 
end. 

There are several ways in which we make this great 
transition. First, by definition and constitution of the 
generalized object. We have seen that objects of mean- 
ing are what the mind constitutes as its objects. It 
builds the object according to its own plan and specifi- 
cations ; and having built one it can affirm that what is 
true of that archetypal object is true of all belonging to 
the same class by virtue of their constitution. This 
means of reaching generalized objects or universal laws 
prevails in the world of pure thought, such as mathe- 
matics. A circle is constituted by definition as a figure 
having certain specified relations, and it follows that 
what is true of one such figure is true of all in their 
very nature or constitution. This principle applies with 
absolute universality and infallible certainty in the vast 
and beautiful world of mathematics, and such general- 
ized objects are the most certain we know. Science 
itself can claim infallibility only as it brings its results 
into mathematical form. 

Another way in which we reach generalized objects 



SUBJECTIVE REALITY 103 

or laws is through the principle of cause and effect. It 
is an intuitive and necessary belief of the mind that the 
same cause acting under the same conditions will always 
issue in the same effect. By no possible process of 
thought can we think the operation of a cause through 
into its effect and conceive of its doing different things 
under the same conditions. This is the chief scientific 
means by which we discover laws in nature. Having 
found the operation of a cause in nature, we rest on it as 
a general law and with the surest confidence sweep it 
through the entire heavens. While this principle has its 
basis in a necessity of our thought, yet its application is 
complicated and rendered doubtful by the difficulty, and 
sometimes the impossibility, of determining just what the 
cause is and whether the same conditions are always 
present. This doubt often infects our practical rules of 
conduct and sometimes our accepted laws of nature. 

Still another method of reaching general laws is that 
of experience, or trial. When we find that what is 
true in one case is true in a similar case and in many cases, 
we begin to think that it is true in all such cases, and 
then we trust it as a law. Proverbs are the expression 
of what has been found practically true in conduct, and 
science rests many of its accepted laws of nature on this 
basis. Even so solid a law as gravitation has no other 
guarantee than our experience. We find all the masses 
of matter we know obeying this law, but we do not know 
that it is absolutely universal. Laws resting on our ex- 
perience are infected with the possibility of error more 



104 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

deeply than any other kind of generalized objects, and 
yet these form a large part of the practical basis of 
life. 

Although objects of experience may thus be classified 
and considered separately, yet it is important to observe 
that they do not exist as sharply divided classes, but these 
various kinds shade into one another ; or, rather, percep- 
tion, memory, creative thought and imagination, meaning, 
will, feeling, and generality, are elements that enter into 
the constitution of all objects in different degrees and 
combinations. There is hardly an object in which every 
one of these elements is not present, at least in some 
slight degree. Perception gathers the raw material which 
thought works up into outline ; this skeleton is then filled 
out with memory and imagination, and grows into mean- 
ing and will, and is flooded with feeling, and thus leaps 
into action. We may classify these objects according as 
one or another element predominates in their constitu- 
tion, but all these elements are present in varying degrees 
in each object, and their complex unity makes the rich 
and glowing and powerful thing we know. 

The soul may thus be viewed as a workshop or factory 
equipped with an elaborate outfit of complex and delicate 
mechanisms for the construction of objects of experience, 
all its faculties and activities working together for the 
manufacture of these products ; or as a fertile field sown 
with a multitudinous variety of seeds, which sprout and 
blossom and ripen into objects of experience, which may 
then wither away. 



SUBJECTIVE REALITY 105 

4. General Characters of the Soul 

There are now some general characters of the soul 
which it is important we should notice. 

(i) The soul is a unit. At first sight its experiences 
may seem as multiform and variable as the weather. But 
even the weather is inclosed in the envelope of the at- 
mosphere, and the soul has its unity. All its faculties 
are modes of one consciousness, and all its experiences 
cohere together. There are no real breaks or gaps in 
its diverse experiences, nothing like isolated compart- 
ments or cells in its structure. The puzzling facts of 
** multiple personality" and " split-off consciousness " are 
abnormal states that do not affect the general truth that 
normal consciousness is self -evidently unitary. The unity 
of the soul is the self that is the center of all its states, 
the subject of all its experiences. However variously 
this self may exercise itself, however violently it may be 
strained and shocked under the impact of conflicting and 
warring motives and emotions, its unity is never ruptured, 
and it abides as one consciousness and one soul. 

(2) The soul is subject to growth. Its origin is 
wrapped in mystery, but it emerges out of the vast deeps 
of being as a germ and gradually unfolds through all the 
stages from infancy to maturity. It grows by the ab- 
sorption of mental material or suggestion, which it works 
up and assimilates by its own activities; and thus the 
dim consciousness of the babe grows into the vivid and 
profound consciousness of the poet and philosopher. 



Io6 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

This growth is the law of the soul as a whole and also 
of its separate faculties and objects of experience. Each 
faculty, as perception and memory, expands through ex- 
ercise, and each object of experience grows from germ 
to fruit. This growth is subject to the law of continuity, 
each existing state of experience springing out of preced- 
ing states, and all states follow in unbroken succession. 
The soul in its mature growth is thus a product of evolu- 
tion, and is the primary and classic illustration of the work- 
ing of this principle. 

(3) The soul is subject to law. Our first impression 
of our inner life may be that it is a scene of chaos in 
which state succeeds state in tumultuous confusion. 
But the more we study it, the more we find it follows an 
orderly line of succession, and we may discover that 
even its wildest whim is not without its mental connec- 
tion and cause. Our associations of ideas at first seem 
as lawless and causeless as any of our mental states, and 
yet the psychologist has reduced them to a few control- 
ling principles, and never doubts that the most erratic, 
grotesque, and inexplicable association is yet connected 
with the contents of the mind by some thread of rational 
explanation. Our perceptions grow into constructs ac- 
cording to rational laws ; and memory, imagination, 
judgment, and all the faculties and activities of the mind 
have their principles of operation. The whole science 
of psychology is based on this assumption, and without 
it any science of the mind would be impossible. Equally 
impossible without mental laws would be any practical 



SUBJECTIVE REALITY 107 

use of the mind. It is because the mind works accord- 
ing to law that we can understand and direct it, just as 
for the same reason we can turn nature to our use, which 
we could not do if it were a chaos. 

In saying the soul works according to law we do not 
mean that it acts under external necessity or is driven by 
force from without, as we may conceive the material 
world to be : we mean that it acts from reason, under 
the play of its own motives and judgment. The soul is 
a law-saturated organism down to its roots and germ. 
This makes it a rational world. We may have difficulty 
in defining the nature and operation of mental laws and 
in harmonizing them with other aspects of the soul, but 
they are an ultimate fact in our experience. 

(4) The soul is subject to habit. Habit is a fixed 
way of acting as the result of repetition. A piece of 
paper, having been folded once, will more easily fold 
along the same crease again. All mental faculties and 
operations are subject to this principle. Two ideas, 
having been associated once, will tend to cling together, 
so that when one comes into the mind, the other may come 
adhering to it ; and the association of these ideas may 
grow into a habit so strong that they become practicably 
inseparable. Memory is a habit, the reviving of an 
image or idea once making it easier to revive it again. 
A judgment having been formed, the mind tends to form 
similar judgments, and thus habits of behef grow. An 
emotion having been experienced, the soul is apt to experi- 
ence similar emotions under similar excitations, and thus 



I08 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

emotional and aesthetic habits are formed. The will, 
having cast itself in a deed, is likely to act in that way 
again, and thus habits of action grow. Moral and spiritual 
experiences tend to repeat themselves, and thus character 
is created. Under the law of habit the soul crystallizes 
into a fixed character, which may become its final dispo- 
sition and destiny. By far the greater part of our 
life, language and learning, physical and mental skill, 
conduct and character, work and worship, becomes cast 
and cooled in the mold of habit. This fact is of tremen- 
dous practical importance, both for good and for evil. 

(5) Notwithstanding the fact that the soul is subject 
to growth and to law and to habit, yet it is still free, a 
self-acting and self-directed personality. The freedom 
of the soul is its ability to choose and act in accordance 
with its own nature. The soul is never driven to choose 
against its will, but in its hardest fight and sorest strait, 
in the very darkest tragedy of its trial, it takes that 
course which in its judgment seems best. Though all 
worlds seem to be reeling and wrecked around it, yet it 
sits on its own throne and sways its own scepter. 

It matters not how strait the gate, 
How charged with punishment the scroll, 

I am the master of my fate, 
I am the captain of my soul. 

Yet in its every choice the soul never escapes the law of 
its own nature. Law and liberty are thus not mutually 
antagonistic and exclusive in the soul, but are harmonious 
and coincident. It may be easy to array them against 



SUBJECTIVE REALITY 1 09 

each other and difficult to harmonize them in theory, but 
we are conscious of both in our experience and of their 
coincident working. This liberty of self-action and of 
self-government is a fundamental fact of our personality 
and the necessary basis of our moral responsibility and 
life. 

(6) The soul is teleological in its nature ; it foresees 
and shapes its action by and towards ends. It sets up 
patterns and ideals after which it fashions its products. 
It works according to design. All human life is per- 
vaded and governed by this principle. The child in its 
very play is following ideals, youth dreams visions, and 
manhood is a struggle to achieve its am.bitions. All 
human products, whether of industry or of art, bear the 
marks of design; they are evidently shaped for ends 
which they are intended to fulfill. Some ends are near, 
and others are remote as they 

forecast the years 
And find in loss a gain to match, 
Or reach a hand thro' time to catch 
The far-off interest of tears. 

The ends of the passing day are quickly fulfilled and 
forgotten. But a profession or a friendship is a life- 
plan, and a religious faith and hope looks for its final 
fulfillment beyond the horizon of this world into the 
eternal and infinite. Thus the soul is teleological in its 
operations, and casts all its products in the mold of 
design. 

This brief elementary view of the nature of the soul 



no THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

shows it to US as a bit of ultimate reality, which is yet a 
vast world full of powers and activities that will be of 
far-reaching significance and value when we come to 
inquire into the nature of reality in general, as the 
astronomer finds the little orbit of this tiny globe of 
basal importance when he comes to measure the distance 
of the stars. With this point of reality as the fulcrum 
for our lever, we shall now try to move the world. 



CHAPTER VII 

HOW WE REACH OBJECTIVE REALITY 

Before we try to move the world, however, we must 
pause a moment and consider whether there is any- 
world to move. We have been showing that the world 
as we know it consists primarily of phenomena, or ob- 
jects of experience. Sensations do not give us objective 
realities as they are, but only symbolic representations 
of them. The apparent extension of space is resolved 
into a subjective form which the mind constitutionally 
imposes on its own experiences. Since all the things 
we directly know are thus subjective states, how can we 
know there is any objective reality at all .'* May not the 
whole world of our experience simply be a subjective 
state of consciousness without any objective cause or 
connection? We have been assuming that subjective 
phenomena have objective realities as their cause, but 
what is the ground or the need of this assumption ? 
May not this appearance of objective causes be only 
another illusion of the mind ? One of the commonest 
objections to idealism — and to some minds it is the 
strongest objection — is the contention that it logically 
drives the thinker that holds it into solipsism, or the be- 
lief that he is the solitary being in existence and that 
the whole universe is but an affection or experience of 



112 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

himself. How can we escape this conclusion and reach 
objective reality ? 

Some ideahsts concede that we cannot logically dis- 
prove solipsism if any one wants to maintain it; and 
that it is only by an act of faith that we believe in other 
minds and in a world other than ourselves. " Argue 
with him as we will," it is said, " raise what objections 
we may, the solipsist is secure in his position, for he 
calmly accepts all the grounds we may urge for objective 
reality and absorbs them as subjective states into himself. 
The only answer to him is our faith in objective reality." 
But we do not admit this negative position, and believe 
there are positive grounds for reaching an objective world. 
It is true that a refutation of solipsism cannot rest on 
mathematical demonstration : it can rest only on those 
general logical processes that convince us in all psycho- 
logical problems and in the common affairs of life. 

It may also be noted that the dualist, who believes in 
an extended world of reality, cannot urge solipsism as 
an objection against idealism, because he is himself no 
more secure against falling into the pit of solipsism than 
is the idealist. Solipsism is a sponge that will suck up 
dualism just as quickly and thoroughly as it will idealism. 
The dualist also must find a rock that is secure against 
this quicksand, and we believe there is such a rock. 

(r) One objection against solipsism is its absurdity. 
It turns the whole world to " the baseless fabric of this 
vision " in a far deeper and more destructive way than 
the subjectivism of idealism, and leaves no shred of 



HOW WE REACH OBJECTIVE REALITY 113 

reality outside of a solitary self. That any one should 
think himself the only being in existence is a state of 
mind so monstrous that we could only regard it as 
insanity. All thinkers, idealists not less than dualists, 
believe in an objective world and in their most skeptical 
speculations never for a moment doubt it. Our practical 
faith in this world does not depend on any arguments 
we can give for it, and is stronger than these arguments. 
There is therefore no practical issue involved in the 
matter, and the question is a purely academic one. 
Nevertheless, it is worth showing that our belief in an 
objective world is not a mere blind instinct or even a 
matter of faith, but rests on rational grounds. 

(2) A glance into the total stream of our experience 
discloses it as consisting of two parallel streams : the 
stream of our sensations, or of phenomena, that we com- 
monly call the external world or the world of nature ; and 
the stream of our thoughts, including our feelings and 
purposes, that we think of as our own inner life. These 
two streams differ in ways that suggest a difference of na- 
ture and origin. The stream of phenomena is very vivid 
as compared with the stream of thought ; it impresses us 
more deeply or stings us more sharply, as is seen in 
comparing a sensation with its revived image in mem- 
ory. Already we have ground to suspect that the 
bright and sharp stream is caused in a different way 
from the fainter and weaker stream. This suspicion is 
confirmed by the fact that we stand in quite different 
relations to these two streams. The stream of our 



114 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

thoughts is subject in a large degree to our control. 
We can deflect it in certain directions, towards or away 
from certain objects of experience, and can intensify or 
diminish it and even at points banish it. We can control it 
as a part of ourselves, and we are immediately conscious 
of it as ourselves. The stream of sensations or phenom- 
ena that we call the outer world, however, is not thus 
subject to our control, but affects us as a permanent 
order independent of us. Our sensations of the sun, 
for instance, illustrate this fact. The sun is always 
there, and we cannot banish it or work any change in 
it. It is true we can shut our eyes to it, and in this 
sense blot it out, but it is always there as a permanent 
possibility of sensation, and by no act of ours can we 
get rid of it as such permanent cause. But the sun 
is only one object in a vast system of things which 
we call nature or the world, and which exists as a per- 
manent order of phenomena. It constantly affects us 
as a fixed system, and we learn its laws and adapt our- 
selves to it. 

Now the stream of sensations is our own experience, 
but the permanent possibility of these sensations and 
their fixed order, both of which are beyond our control, 
are explainable only on the ground that this stream of 
sensations in our experience has a cause outside of our 
experience. Control is of the essential nature of con- 
sciousness : this is one of the marks by which we 
recognize and delimit ourselves, one of the constituent 
elements and boundaries of our personality; and this 



HOW WE REACH OBJECTIVE REALITY 115 

permanent stream or fixed order refuses to submit to 
our control and come within this boundary, and thereby 
declares itself as being something other than ourselves. 
At any rate, anything that acts in this independent way 
is what we mean by objective reality. If the solipsist 
persists in calling this permanent order that refuses to 
come within the circle of his will a part of himself, we 
need only answer that such a permanent and independ- 
ent order of being fulfills our conception of objective 
reality. We thus logically reach the conclusion that 
this stream of experience we call nature has some solid 
and majestic bank and bed of objective reality as its 
cause. 

(3) A further look into this dual stream of experi- 
ence, consisting of the bright stream of phenomena and 
its parallel fainter stream of thought, reveals to us one 
portion or section of experience that is in some degree 
common to both streams. This section of our experi- 
ence we call our body. On the one side, it lies or flows 
in the bright stream of phenomena because it affects us 
as phenomena, being seen and heard and felt through 
our senses just as is any other object. And it is subject 
to all the laws of the phenomenal world. It obeys the 
laws of matter in the mass, such as gravitation, and the 
laws of matter in the molecule or atom, such as chemical 
affinity. It therefore belongs to the stream of phenom- 
ena, or to the objective world which we have found is 
not ourselves. On the other side, it differs radically 
from this objective world in that we are immediately aware 



Il6 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

of it as being in closer relation with us than is the 
general world of nature, of which it is yet a part. It 
affects our consciousness, and our consciousness affects it 
in ways in which the general stream or framework of 
nature does not affect us and we do not affect it. In 
particular, it is subject to our will as nature is not. It 
moves at our bidding and executes our purposes, though 
in so doing it runs counter to and overcomes the energies 
of nature. The movements of the body cannot at all be 
explained by the laws of nature, though it is still subject 
to these laws : these movements can be explained only 
as the response to our will, as being geared into our con- 
sciousness. Thus the body is a section of the general 
stream of our experience that is common to the bright 
stream of phenomena and the faint stream of thought ; 
or, more definitely, it is the phenomenon of a reality 
that is intermediate between the reality of our con- 
sciousness and the reality of the phenomenal world, and 
is interhnked with both ; it is the connecting tie or vital 
artery between these two worlds through which they 
interact. This relation of the soul and body, which is 
one of the most difficult problems of metaphysics, will 
come up later for further elucidation. 

The practical interaction of the soul and body is one 
of the most familiar experiences of life. The soul ex- 
presses itself through the body. The mind utters its 
thought through language, feature, and movement. Joy 
wreathes the face in smiles, and fear blanches it white. 
All the emotions of the heart paint themselves on the 



HOW WE REACH OBJECTIVE REALITY 117 

face. The will moves every nerve and muscle to do its 
work. The soul pours through the body as water through 
a sieve, and thus manifests its whole inner life. Not 
only the tongue speaks, but the eye is eloquent, the 
flushed face is charged with meaning, and every feature 
blabs. So, also, the body acts upon the soul, conveying 
to it thought, stirring up its feehngs, moving its will, 
causing it to leap with joy or cry out with pain, and thus 
pouring in through all its sluices quickening influences 
that flood the soul. We not only express ourselves 
through the body, but it is largely through the body 
that we know ourselves. Knowing how the soul and 
body are thus closely connected as causes or signs of 
each other's condition, from the state of the one we can 
infallibly infer the state of the other. From seeing the 
face we can tell the state of the soul, and from the state 
of the soul we can describe the features of the face. 
This fact has an important bearing upon our next 
argument. 

(4) Let us now take a still further look into the great 
complex current of our experience with its bright stream 
of phenomena and its parallel faint stream of thought. 
We see in the bright stream certain spots or units of 
phenomena that are strikingly similar to our own phe- 
nomenal body. These bodies are sections of the stream 
of phenomena in that they affect us as phenomena and 
are subject to all the laws of the phenomenal world. But 
they also differ from this stream just as our own body 
does. They move and speak and in all respects act like 



Il8 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

our own body. We can speak with them, and in every- 
way they respond to us as beings with Hke thoughts and 
passions as our own. Now we know how to interpret 
our own body as the expression of our consciousness. 
Our bodily movements are the phenomenal symbols of 
our inner life. The logical step, therefore, is direct and 
conclusive by which we infer that these phenomenal 
bodies are the expression of inner life, or of souls, like 
our own. We thus know that these bodies which appear 
as phenomena in the stream of our own experience are 
the bpdies of other souls; and as such souls must be 
ultimate reality like our own soul, we have thus reached 
objective reality and placed it upon solid ground. 

Solipsism is thus logically undermined ; its cell of iso- 
lation is ruptured. Even if the solipsist were to take 
the position that these phenomenal bodies are only points 
in his own experience and so belong to him, we answer 
that such bodies, animated as they are like our own, ex- 
plainable only as having inner life like our own, are what 
we mean by other persons ; and if the solipsist insists 
that these other persons are still only a part of himself, 
there is some truth in his contention ; for we are all 
connected up in one vast organism of souls, and each 
one may view himself as the center of the whole. But 
this fact of the organic solidarity of souls is not solip- 
sism, for it depends on the existence of distinct souls or 
personalities. 

We have now reached a world to move. It embraces 
other souls, but it also embraces that vast and mysterious 



HOW WE REACH OBJECTIVE REALITY 119 

framework of being that lies back of the permanent order 
of phenomena we call nature. To move this world of 
nature, to penetrate into its inner meaning and lay 
bare the secret of its reality, is the great problem and 
adventure of metaphysics, and to this problem we now 
advance. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE NATURE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY 

The individual soul works through the shows of sense 
(Which, ever proving false, still promise to be true) 
Up to an outer soul as individual too ; 
And, through the fleeting, lives to die into the fixed, 
And reach at length God, man, or both together mixed. 

— Browning. 

The world hangs before us as a vast many-colored 
curtain or veil. The great question of metaphysics is, 
What is the nature of this curtain ? What lies behind 
this veil ? 

I. The World as Phenomenon 

Our reasoning thus far has shown that this veil is a 
phenomenon, or stream of phenomena ; that is, it is not 
a reality in itself, but is an appearance occasioned in the 
mind by some objective cause acting upon it. A stone 
or a star is the product of some reality acting on the 
mind, which reacts in accordance with its own constitu- 
tion so as to erect and project this object of experience. 
The various sensational qualities of the object of expe- 
rience, its color, sonance, odor, taste, and touch, are states 
of the mind, and as such they cannot exist in extended 
matter. Furthermore, this subjectivity of the object of 



THE NATURE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY 121 

experience includes its spatial form, which is also a sub- 
jective appearance imposed on our sensational experi- 
ences by the constitution of the mind, and is not a form 
of the noumenal reality itself. That curtain of the 
world, then, is not matter according to our common 
meaning of this term : it is not an extended and insen- 
sate substance with the various qualities we ascribe to 
matter. This reasoning destroys the materiality of the 
world, but it does not show us its real nature ; it is neg- 
ative and destructive, but not positive and constructive. 
We are still left to inquire. What is the nature of this 
world-curtain .'' The fact, however, that the reality of 
the world is not extended matter, raises a presumption 
that it is spirit or mind. The only kind of reahty other 
than matter we know or can conceive is mind, and, mat- 
ter having been resolved into a phenomenon, only mind 
is left. This alternative is not conclusive, for there may 
be kinds of reality that lie beyond our experience or our 
power to know. We have so far only a presumption in 
favor of the idealistic view. 

2. The World as Mind in Man 

There is one point, or rather miUions of points, in the 
curtain of the world where we have pierced through it 
into its noumenal reality ; namely, the point of human 
personality. We have seen that the stream of the phe- 
nomenal world contains sections or units which are proved 
to be the bodies of other minds like our own. The real- 
ity in every one of these bodies is known to us to be 



122 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

consciousness ; and thus we know that the objective 
world in more than a bilHon points is mind. This fact 
strengthens the presumption that the whole fabric of 
the world-curtain is spiritual in its ontological nature. 
As these multitudinous tiny units in the world-stream 
are the phenomena of finite minds, may not the great 
stream itself be the phenomenon of a vastly greater 
Mind ? Towards this conclusion we are now tending. 

3. The World as Life 

As we interpret the phenomenal bodies of men in the 
world-stream as the symbols of inner life like our own, 
can we in any degree apply the same principle of in- 
terpretation to the world-stream in general ? The points 
at which this stream most closely resembles the phe- 
nomenal bodies of men are the bodies of animals. Some 
of these, such as the higher domesticated animals, no- 
tably the dog, present to us phenomena that are strikingly 
similar to human actions. The behavior of a dog can- 
not be explained as caused by mechanical forces, as we 
explain the fall of rain and the flow of a river. It ex- 
hibits phenomena that clearly imply an inner life of per- 
ception, memory, feeling, rudimentary reasoning, and 
will. The phenomena of the dog are certainly the sym- 
bols of consciousness, though we infer from these phe- 
nomena that its consciousness is vastly less clear and full 
than our own. What is thus true of the dog is true in a 
lessening degree of all the higher animals as we observe 
their actions down through the descending scale to the 



THE NATURE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY 123 

lower forms. The phenomena presented by the elephant 
and lion, deer and fox, bird and bee, whale and fish, evi- 
dently symbolize an inner life of varying degrees of con- 
sciousness. But when we descend to the lowest types 
of animal life, the worm and oyster, can we think that 
they have any dimmest consciousness ? There is no 
point on our descending scale where we can say that 
consciousness has utterly faded out. It is true we must 
think that self-consciousness has long ceased before we 
reach the lowest depths of animal life, but the phenomena 
of motion they present, the way they feed and shrink 
from a touch and defend themselves and carry on all the 
complex activities of their being, persuade us that they, 
too, present the phenomenal symbols of an inner life 
that may be something like the dim deeps into which 
our consciousness sinks in sleep or under an anaes- 
thetic. 

When we pass below animal into vegetable life, we 
might think we have gone far beyond the borders of 
consciousness into a kind of being that contains no germ 
or trace of mentality. Yet closer consideration shows 
us we have crossed no logical limit to mental life in 
passing from the animal to the vegetable. No one 
doubts that the vegetable is alive, and the only question 
is, whether it exhibits any of the characteristics of men- 
tal life, or whether its outer activities are phenomenal 
symbols of inner soul life, as in the case of animals. 
The vegetable does exhibit such characteristics, though 
they may be few and faint as compared with those of 



124 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

the higher animals. It carries on a complex system of 
physiological activities by which it nourishes itself and 
grows and thus parallels the main activities of animal 
life. It eats and drinks and breathes, assimilates food, 
and throws off waste products. It can be injured, 
starved, poisoned, is subject to diseases, and responds to 
remedial treatment. Some vegetables display activities 
that are startlingly like mental operations. The sensi- 
tive plant will shrink back and close up at a touch as 
quickly and apparently as purposively as an animal or a 
human being. Many plants are armed with protective 
organs which they use efficiently, and some have various 
traps and weapons with which they seize and kill prey. 
The vegetable kingdom is a world of wonders that 
excite the constant astonishment of the scientist. No 
more than the animal can the vegetable organism be 
reduced to a physical mechanism. It has an inner life 
that plays through and determines its activities. We 
are here pressed towards the conclusion that as human 
bodies are the symbols of an inner life like our own con- 
sciousness, and as the phenomena of animals are the 
symbols of greatly lower degrees or forms of conscious 
life, so the phenomena of vegetables are the symbols of 
a still lower degree of mental or soul life. 

We may now think we have reached the very bottom 
of life, its bed rock where it rests on the inorganic floor 
and foundation of the world. What can we say of in- 
organic matter } What is the nature of this thing .? It, 
too, is a phenomenon, and so is only the symbol of an 



THE NATUTIE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY 125 

inner reality. But what is the nature of this reality ? 
Can we affirm or believe or even suspect that the inner 
reality of inorganic matter is also living and mental in 
however low and dim a degree ? Toward this belief 
and affirmation the science and thought of our day 
are tending. It has generally been thought that the 
chasm between organic and inorganic matter is one 
that can never be crossed by any evolutionary process. 

Tyndall thought he could discern in matter " the 
promise and the potency of life," but his view won little 
credence or respect and was almost laughed to scorn. 
There has been a great battle over the possibility of the 
" spontaneous generation" of life out of inorganic matter, 
and the victory has generally been regarded as remain- 
ing with the opponents of such possibility. No known 
instance of such generation of life can be adduced. 
Yet there is a steady drift or pressure of scientific 
thought in this direction. The view appears to be grow- 
ing in the scientific world that not only is such origin of 
life not known to be impossible, but that there are facts 
and considerations that point strongly towards it. Theo- 
logians seem to have viewed the possibility of the spon- 
taneous generation of life with some uneasiness, if not 
alarm, as though it would prove unfriendly, if not de- 
structive, to faith. But this fear has passed, and the dis- 
covery or demonstration of such origin of life would not 
now occasion any alarm in the theological world and 
would create little surprise in the scientific world. 

Nearly forty years ago (1872) Dr. H. Charlton Bastian 



126 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

published a book on " The Beginnings of Life," in which 
he advocated the spontaneous generation of hfe out of 
inorganic matter. This book resulted in an international 
controversy among scientists, the outcome of which was 
generally held to be that M. Pasteur had demonstrated 
by actual experiments that such generation of life could 
not take place. Dr. Bastian, who is now (1909) emeri- 
tus professor of medicine in University College, London, 
recently returned to the subject in a volume entitled 
" The Evolution of Life," in which he examines and 
undertakes to refute Pasteur's supposed demonstration 
and gives reasons for believing that life has been evolved 
out of inorganic matter. One of these reasons is the 
persistence of the lowest types of life, such as bacteria, 
unchanged through millions of years. He contends that 
evolution would require that these initial forms should be 
left behind and perish in the upward march of life, and 
that their persistence on the theory that denies spon- 
taneous generation is a mystery. But " the present-day 
existence of these organisms may be fully explained, 
and is just what might be expected if they are ever 
seething up anew by archebiosis and heterogenesis ; " 
that is, if life is being constantly evolved from inorganic 
matter. It is true it is settled that spontaneous genera- 
tion cannot take place in the decoction of hay or extract 
of beef, as Pasteur proved, but the doctrine of evolution 
presses persistently on this point, and it is probably true 
that most scientists to-day believe that inorganic matter 
contains the subtle threads out of which life has been 



THE NATURE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY 127 

spun, though when and how this process has been, or is 
being, effected is yet a matter of speculation. 

Let us, however, look straight into inorganic matter 
and note what we can see. We at once encounter the 
striking fact that so-called " inorganic" matter is not in- 
organic at all, but is highly organized. This is specially 
true of crystals, which are not regarded as " organic " 
or living matter, and yet they are demonstrably not 
amorphous matter, but exhibit many of the characteristics 
of living organisms. Crystals obey the three great laws 
of life : they have each its own type or species which 
persist through successive, generations ; they grow by 
nutrition, absorbing and assimilating material from the 
mother liquor ; and they are reproduced by impregnation 
and filiation. A solution of a crystallizable liquid will 
not begin to crystallize if it is protected from the germs 
of crystals, just as a decoction of hay will not generate 
any bacteria if it is protected from the germs float- 
ing in the air. If the crystallizable liquid is touched 
with a rod that has been, sterilized, no crystals will 
appear ; but if it is touched with a rod that has been im- 
pregnated by coming in contact with the crystals of the 
substance, the liquid will immediately begin to crystallize. 
The demonstration is complete that there are crystalline 
germs that propagate crystals, just as there are germs 
that propagate each species of life. This is true of each 
substance in one set of conditions, but in another set 
of conditions crystallization spontaneously takes place. 
" There is for each substance a set of conditions (tem- 



128 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

perature, degree of concentration, volume of the solution) 
in which the crystalline individuals can be produced only 
by germs or by filiation. . . . There is, however, for the 
same body another set of circumstances more or less 
complex, in which its germs appear spontaneously." ^ 
Thus matter that is not regarded as living in the ordi- 
nary sense exhibits some of the most fundamental char- 
acteristics of life. There are still more curious and re- 
markable features presented by some forms of matter, 
such as the " radiobes " of John B. Burke, the English 
scientist, described by him in his work on " The Origin 
of Life." These are formations in certain chemical so- 
lutions that resemble plant growths and behave wonder- 
fully like living things. Mr. Burke does not regard 
them as living, but they develop forms and exhibit 
activities that seem to ally them with living rather than 
with dead matter. 

But is not uncrystalline, amorphous matter also 
organized .? Chemical molecules are highly complex 
bodies, often composed of an immense number of atoms 
arranged in accordance with fixed plans and in a state 
of activity rapid and violent beyond our power of con- 
ception. The molecule, like the crystal and vegetable 
and animal, is true to its own type, and maintains its 
own cycle of activity. Not only so, but the atom itself 
is now found to be a vast world, composed of hundreds 

1 See a paper on the " Life of Matter," by A. Dastre, setting forth these 
investigations and other related facts, in the Report of the Smithsonian 
Institution for 1902, pages 393-429. 



THE NATURE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY 129 

and thousands of smaller bodies or electrons, organized 
into a system in which they obey their own laws and 
perform their own activities. Still further, matter in its 
last analysis is resolved into energy. All its properties 
manifest themselves to us in the form of energy. Its light, 
heat, sonorousness, odor, taste, and touch are all so many 
kinds of activity. The atom is resolved into electrons 
which behave as though they were, and eminent physi- 
cists believe them to be, bits of electricity, or vortexes 
or whirls in the ether, or manifestations of pure energy. 

Now life manifests itself to us as activity. It is only 
through its activity that we know it to be life. We 
know our own life through its activity. Consciousness 
itself is in a state of constant action, and an absolutely 
impassive consciousness could not know anything and 
would not be consciousness. If the activities of plants 
and animals are known to us as manifestations of life, 
how can we escape supposing that the activities of mat- 
ter in crystals, molecules, atoms, and electrons are also 
manifestations of life .'' 

The belief that matter is animate is very old and has 
been widespread and persistent in the world. Primi- 
tive religion was widely based on animism, and the pan- 
theistic philosophies of the East are saturated with the 
same doctrine. The great philosophers have usually 
held this view, and it is a favorite thought with poets. 

List to the voices. Everything has voice. 

Winds, waves, and flames, trees, reeds, and rocks rejoice. 

They live, indeed, each thing instinct with soul. 



I30 



THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 



Leibnitz teaches: "There is no inorganic kingdom; 
only a great organic kingdom, of which mineral, vege- 
table, and animal forms are the various developments. 
. . . Continuity exists everywhere throughout the world, 
and life, together with organization, also exists every- 
where. Nothing is dead ; life is universal." Not only 
poetry and philosophy, but modern science, as we have 
seen, is tending towards the same view and is discern- 
ing, with Tyndall, in matter " the promise and the 
potency of life." 

From this point of view, the physical universe is not 
a dead mass and expanse of insensate matter, infinitely 
exceeding in quantity the amount of living matter, but 
it, too, is alive down through crystals and molecules and 
atoms to the burning core of the earth and out to the 
farthest star, and throbs in every part. As every move- 
ment of our bodies and molecular motion in our brains 
is accompanied with corresponding psychic experience 
or inner life, so all movements of the physical universe, 
from the sweep of stars in their orbits to the vibration 
of atoms in molecules and the whirl of ether in electrons, 
are accompanied with corresponding inner life, of which 
they are the phenomenal expression. The universe is 
not a dead thing, a vast corpse or skeleton, but a vital 
organism suffused and thrilled throughout with the 
warmth and splendor, the beauty and joy, of life. The 
glitter of the constellation and the glory of the sunset, 
the gentle murmur of the rivulet and the mighty surge 
and moan of the sea, tall pine, tiny fern, and the ex- 



THE NATURE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY 131 

quisite petals and perfume of the rose, as well as the 
song of the bird, the play of human features and the 
music of the human voice, all are phenomenal symbols 
of inner experience. We live in a living world. We 
know life immediately only in ourselves as the activity 
of our spirits. Life is spirit in action. Objective reality 
manifests itself to us as activity, and this leads us to the 
conclusion that it is spirit. 

4. The World as Thought 

We again open the great world-book and find that it 
is written in the language of thought and discloses to 
us a thought-world. We may attack the problem at this 
point along several lines. 

(i) The world is intelligible, and is therefore a product 
or form of thought. The immediate object of our knowl- 
edge is always a state of our own minds, and is therefore a 
purely mental object. It is difficult to see, as we have 
already shown, how the mind could know or come into 
any relation with an object that is not akin to itself. 
That the non-spatial purely spiritual mind could lay hold 
of, or be affected by, anything so foreign to its own 
nature as an extended insensate lump of matter, is a 
doctrine hard to defend and more difficult to believe, the 
more it is considered. The fact that the world can be 
known, therefore, is itself presumption, if not proof, 
that it is mental in its nature. It is not a foreign body 
apart from and alien to the mind, but a mental construc- 
tion akin to the mind. The world as we experience it is 



132 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

certainly a state and construct of our minds, and so far 
is purely mental. " The world is my idea," as Schopen- 
hauer sententiously says in the opening words of his 
work " The World as Will and Idea." The question we 
are now considering is whether the objective ontological 
cause of the subjective phenomenal world that the mind 
erects and projects, is mental also. In evidence of the 
mental nature of the ontological world, we adduce the 
fact that the world we know is intelligible : therefore its 
ontological cause must be intelligent. 

An illustration may help us at this point. A book is 
written in characters that express thought. The writer 
of the book put his thoughts into written language, and 
there they lie on the page symbolically represented, 
visibly crystallized or congealed in spatial forms. The 
reader now takes up the book and interprets the 
characters into the original thoughts of the author ; he 
redissolves these symbolical crystals back into the author's 
thoughts, which are now dissolved in the reader's mind 
and become his own mental states. The book is thus 
an intermediary means by which the reader rethinks the 
writer's thoughts. It is known by the reader to express 
thought because he can interpret it in terms of thought. 
The assumption that the book is intelligible explains 
its characters, which otherwise remain an enigma and 
mystery. Any writing in unknown characters, however 
ancient and mysterious it may be, whether written in 
strange hieroglyphics on a parchment or cut in grotesque 
symbols and pictures on a rock, is always assumed to be 



THE NATURE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY 133 

intelligible, and scholars at once go to work to find its 
key and unlock its meaning. When the meaning is 
found, it is always attributed to a mind as its cause. 

Now the world is a great book written in a vast and 
various language. It is a grand picture book or volume 
with illuminated text in which appear all the facts and 
forms of nature depicted in many-hued colors. The 
broad fact about this book is that it is intelhgible. The 
human mind can spell out its letters and words, and in a 
measure understand it. Its simple meanings lie on its 
face, and men must understand these in order to live at 
all. The meaning of food and drink, of fire and water, 
of plants and animals, of the soil and the sea, sun and 
stars, must be known by men, or they would soon perish. 
But through long ages men have studied this book with 
close and ever closer application, and a vast mass of 
knowledge has thus been slowly accumulated. Greatly 
increased skill in interpreting its language and unlock- 
ing its secrets has thus been gained. Many of the first 
crude and stumbling attempts at reading the book have 
been found to be more or less erroneous, and these mis- 
takes have been corrected. The whole body of human 
knowledge has been in a state of constant change and 
correction by which it has been brought into ever closer 
approximation to the reality of the world. To-day men 
are studying the language of nature with vastly improved 
instruments and processes, and are ever delving deeper 
into its secrets. Test tube and crucible, telescope, micro- 
scope, and spectroscope, and countless other cunning 



134 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

devices, are feeling far in and far out among the elements 
and masses of the world and discovering their structure, 
laws, and operations. All our science is just a reading 
of the great book of the world, as Champollion deci- 
phered the Rosetta Stone. It finds this book intelligible 
throughout, and turns it into thought. Wherever it can 
read a letter or spell out a word of this language, into 
whatever far-off region or deep abyss it may penetrate, 
there it finds the marks of mind. 

Not only so, but science is fully confident that the parts 
of the world it has not yet succeeded in reaching and 
interpreting are just as intelligible also, and would be 
perfectly transparent to thought if they could be brought 
within its ken or seen in their proper light. Never for 
an instant does it think or fear it may ever come upon 
any absurdity or irrational thing, any piece that would 
refuse to fit into the general plan of the world and be a 
discord in its music. Never does it doubt the entire and 
absolute intelligibility of the world, or its translatability 
into terms of mind. The faith of science in the essential 
rationality of the world is as profound and unquestioning 
as any faith religion ever asks or can show. It is faith 
because it cannot be demonstrated by any logical pro- 
cess, and yet it is a necessary presupposition of science. 
It is the torch science must take in its hand before it 
can begin to explore the world. 

The world is thus a book of thought as clearly and 
certainly as any printed volume. The astronomer reads 
the heavens as we read his astronomy ; and his astron- 



THE NATURE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY 135 

omy is only a faint reflection of the skies, an infinitesimal 
miniature of the heavens. The geologist reads the rocky 
leaves of the earth and transcribes them into his own 
volume. The chemist reads chemical combinations as 
they are spelled out in molecules and atoms, and the 
physicist with more penetrating processes reads the 
electrons that compose the atoms. The biologist reads 
the world in terms of life. All scientists are reading 
the book of the world, each one some portion of it written 
in a language in which he is expert, and the whole body 
of science is simply the volume of thought they have 
transcribed from its pages. Scientists never make 
science : they simply find it. Every scientific thought 
they think has been thought for them in the book of 
nature and they simply rethink it, as Kepler said he was 
rethinking the thoughts of God. What they dig out 
of the world with their spade is really the thought of a 
Thinker who was there before them. Nature is their 
real text-book, and their work is simply to interpret it. 
Any thought they find in nature they attribute to the 
intelligibility of the world, and not to themselves. Thus 
nature is saturated with mind in every minutest part, 
and the stupendous whole is simply a splendid system 
of thought. 

This view of the world is frequently set forth by scien- 
tists themselves, and it excites their constant interest and 
wonder. They are never laboring under any deception 
or illusion as to the source of their science, and know it 
is extracted from nature and not spun out of their own 



136 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

minds. A striking and eloquent presentation of this 
view is found in " Ideality in the Physical Sciences," 
by Benjamin Peirce, who was an eminent professor of 
mathematics in Harvard University. He speaks of 
nature as "imbued with intelligible thought," of "the 
amazing intellectuality inwrought into the unconscious 
material world," in which there is " no dark corner of 
hopeless obscurity," of the "dominion of intellectual 
order everywhere found," and "of the vast intellectual 
conceptions in nature." This view is a favorite idea of 
poets — those intuitive philosophers who with deep, direct 
insight read the heart of the world. They look on the 
world as "petrified thought," "congealed mind," and 
speak of it as an embodiment that but thinly veils per- 
sonality. 

The conclusion that this aspect of the world presses 
on us is that it is the product and expression of mind. 
If the intelligibility of a book is proof that it is the 
product of an intelligent writer, the intelligibility of the 
world is proof that it is the product and expression of a 
vastly greater mind. 

(2) This general mark of intelligibility may now be 
resolved into several elements. The world is character- 
ized by law and order. Order is a mark of our own 
minds. Our thoughts are not a heap of disconnected 
and disordered states, but they cohere into a system that 
is pervaded and controlled by mental laws. Threads of 
relation bind them together in combinations and succes- 
sions that follow definite lines so that they can be pre- 



THE NATURE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY 137 

dieted. Amidst all the complicated play of our mental 
states, even when they may seem a scene of confusion, 
no idea or association or succession ever happens by 
chance or without a cause or out of its proper order, but 
the whole mind preserves its unity and harmony in 
orderly action. It may often puzzle and baffle us to 
find this thread of association and causation, but we 
believe it is always there, and can generally find it. 

The outer world is at this point an exact copy of our 
own inner world. Law and order determine the whole 
foundation and structure of the world of nature. This 
order is seen on a grand scale in the heavens, where 
all bodies travel in orbits that obey mathematical laws 
and can be closely calculated ; and the same order ex- 
tends down through all moving masses to molecules 
and atoms. Nature geometrizes. She understands the 
circle and parabola and ellipse, arithmetic and all the 
subtleties of the calculus, because she practically solves 
and obeys these relations. Many of our profoundest 
mathematical operations simply work out and express 
the order we find in nature. Chemistry is equally 
mathematical. Molecules and atoms combine in defi- 
nite and fixed proportions, and never violate their own 
order. Amidst all the dizzy dance which chemistry 
pictures, no atom ever wanders or falls from its proper 
place, but the exact position of every atom could be 
mathematically determined if we had instruments and 
processes refined and powerful enough to reach and 
solve the problem. 



138 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

Causal succession is one of the forms of order, and 
this thread binds the whole universe together. Nothing 
ever happens by chance, but every event in nature 
arises and proceeds under strict causation. Prediction 
is one of the consequences and tests and triumphs of 
law, and science constantly proves its principles by this 
method and often in the most startling ways. Lever- 
rier, from pure scientific calculation, told an astronomer to 
direct his telescope on a certain night to a certain point 
in the heavens and he would see a new planet : the as- 
tronomer looked, and the planet was there. Thomas 
Young predicted from his knowledge of the undulatory 
theory of light, that if a ray of light were passed through 
a certain crystal at a certain angle it would show the re- 
sults of interference, and it did. The astronomer calcu- 
lates eclipses in advance and thus draws up a time table 
for the heavens reaching through centuries, and the 
heavenly bodies, running around their vast orbits at 
amazing speed, arrive at the predicted point on time to 
the second. 

The universe is thus woven of beautiful law and 
order in all its mighty fabric and delicate tissues so that 
no slenderest thread ever gets torn or caught on any 
jagged edge of chance. Amidst all the mighty maze 
and mystery of the universe, in the most distant sun, 
in the darkest depths, in tangled forest, fiercest tempest 
of the sea, or wildest confusion of a storm, no atom ever 
gets out of place, no drop of dew ever misses its ap- 
pointed blade of grass, no star ever shoots a forbidden 



THE NATURE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY 139 

ray. The outer world of phenomena at this point 
matches the inner world of mind, and this is another 
evidence of its mental nature. 

(3) The world is also marked by plan and purpose. 
Purpose is a still more characteristic mark of our own 
minds. We gather our thoughts up into a plan and direct 
them towards an end. We are ever striving to think our 
way forward towards the accomplishment of some object. 
The more systematic and intense is our thinking, the less 
it consists in mere reverie and dreamy drifting ; the more 
it is concentrated and controlled, the more purposive it is. 
Purpose is thus one of the most characteristic marks of 
the mind ; it is mind at its highest and best. 

The world also is pervaded and controlled by plan and 
purpose. Order implies plan, but plan is order organ- 
ized and directed towards an end. There may be order 
without purpose, but not purpose without order. The 
order of the world prepares us to expect plan and fur- 
nishes material with which plan and purpose can work. 
Plan and purpose are seen in the realization of ideals in- 
wrought in the whole fabric and texture of nature. Every- 
thing in nature is fashioned after a plan or type which it 
strives to realize. There are no shapeless, irregular, or 
lawless units, but all individuals belong to species, and 
each species maintains its own type. The atoms are con- 
structed according to definite plans, and each kind of atom 
keeps to its own form. The chemical molecules are 
constructed according to plans that can be mathemati- 
cally represented, and are often enormously complicated. 



I40 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

Snowflakes present the most elaborate and beautiful 
architecture. Crystals are a striking illustration of the 
same law. Each kind of crystal has its own pattern and 
maintains it in all conditions. It is wonderful to see a 
crystal striving to fill out its specific form when it meets 
with obstruction ; and when it is mutilated, it sets to work 
to repair the defect and restore the perfect form. " When 
a crystal from which a piece has been broken off," says Pas- 
teur, "is replaced in the mother liquor, we see that while 
it increases in every direction by a deposit of crystalline 
particles, an excessive activity occurs at the place where 
it was broken or deformed ; and in a few hours this suf- 
fices not only to build up the regular amount required 
for the increase of all parts of the crystal, but to reestab- 
lish regularity of form in the mutilated part." The crystal 
thus builds according to plans and specifications as plainly 
as an architect in constructing a building. It has an ideal 
incorporated in its germ which it is striving to realize. 

This realization of ideals is most strikingly illustrated 
in the world of life, where every spore and seed and germ 
contains a plan which it unfolds in its growth. Instances 
of this architectonic realization are as countless and fa- 
miliar as all the forms of life. Two wonderful examples 
are here adduced, one from Mr. Huxley and the other 
from Maurice Maeterlinck. " The student of Nature," 
says Mr. Huxley, "wonders the more and is astonished the 
less, the more conversant he becomes with her operations ; 
but of all the perennial miracles she offers to his inspec- 
tion, perhaps the most worthy of admiration is the devel- 



THE NATURE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY 141 

opment of a plant or of an animal from the embryo. Ex- 
amine the recently laid egg of some common animal, 
such as a salamander or a newt. It is a minute spheroid 
in which the best microscope will reveal nothing but a 
structureless sac, inclosing a glairy fluid, holding granules 
in suspension. But strange possibilities lie dormant in 
that semifluid globule. Let a moderate supply of warmth 
reach its watery cradle, and the plastic matter undergoes 
changes so rapid and yet so steady and purposelike in 
their succession, that one can only compare them to those 
operated by a skilled modeler upon a formless lump of 
clay. As with an invisible trowel, the mass is divided 
and subdivided into smaller and smaller portions, until 
it is reduced to an aggregation of granules not too large 
to build withal the finest fabrics of the nascent organism. 
And, then, it is as if a dehcate finger traced out the line 
to be occupied by the spinal column, and molded the 
contour of the body ; pinching up the head at one end, 
the tail at the other, and fashioning flank and limb into 
due salamandrine proportions, in so artistic a way, that, 
after watching the process hour by hour, one is almost 
involuntarily possessed by the notion, that some more 
subtle aid to vision than an achromatic, would show the 
hidden artist, with his plan before him, striving with skill- 
ful manipulation to perfect his work. "^ 

The other illustration is Maeterlinck's account of the 
mating of the vallisneria, one of the most remarkable of 
plant courtships : "Its whole existence is spent at the 

1 Lay Sermons, pages 260-261. 



142 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

bottom of the water in a sort of half slumber until the 
moment of the wedding hour comes, when it aspires to a 
new life. Then the female plant slowly uncoils the long 
spiral of its peduncle, rises, emerges, and floats and blos- 
soms on the surface of the pond. From a neighboring 
stem the male flowers, which see it through the sunlit 
water, rise in their turn, full of hope, toward the one that 
rocks, that awaits them, that calls them to a fairer world. 
But when they have come halfway, they feel themselves 
suddenly held back ; their stalk, the very source of their 
life, is too short. Did the males foresee the disillusion 
to which they would be subjected .'' One thing is certain, 
that they have locked up in their hearts a bubble of air, 
even as we lock up in our souls a thought of desperate 
deliverance. It is as though they hesitated for a mo- 
ment ; then, with a magnificent effort, the finest, the most 
supernatural that I know of in all the pageantry of the 
insects and the flowers, in order to rise to happiness they 
deliberately break the bond that attaches them to life. 
They tear themselves from the peduncle, and, with an in- 
comparable flight, amid bubbles of gladness, their petals 
dart up and break the surface of the water. Wounded 
to death, but radiant and free, they float for a moment 
beside their heedless brides and the union is accomplished, 
whereupon the victims drift away to perish, while the 
wife, already a mother, closes her corolla, in which lives 
their last breath, rolls up her spiral, and descends to the 
depths, there to ripen the fruit of the heroic kiss." 
Professor Simon Newcomb says : " Should we see in 



THE NATURE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY 143 

visible masses of matter the same kind of motions which 
we know must take place among the molecules of matter 
as they arrange themselves into complex attitudes neces- 
sary to form the leaf of the plant, we should at once 
conclude they were under the direction of a living mind, 
who was superintending the execution of these arrange- 
ments." 

The realization of plan, which is thus universally seen 
in individual things, is also seen in the wider and ever 
wider combination and interplay of separate parts of the 
world. All things in nature from atoms to constella- 
tions fit into one another with the utmost nicety and 
work together without slip or jar in perfect smoothness. 
What a wide cooperation of forces plays about a blade 
of grass or a flower ? The seed and soil and shower and 
sun, the rocky layers under the soil down to the burning 
core of the earth and all the stars in the sky, mysteri- 
ous physical, chemical, and vital forces, are all working 
together in exquisite harmony that that tiny blade of 
grass may grow, that that frail flower may bloom. 

Rings of wavelets on the water, 

Circling flights of butterflies, 
Interweave themselves with orbits 

Of the planets in the skies. 

Every point in the universe is a center around which 
the whole mighty system is delicately balanced. The 
cosmos constitutes an organism in which the whole 
serves each part and each part serves the whole. " Every 
thing," says Victor Hugo, " labors for every thing. 



144 "^HE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

Algebra is applied to the clouds, the radiation of the 
star profits the rose, and no thinker would dare to affirm 
that the perfume of the hawthorn is useless to the con- 
stellations. There are marvelous relations between 
beings and things, and in this inexhaustible total, from 
the flea to the sun, nothing despises the other, for all 
have need of each other. Every bird that flies has 
round its foot the thread of infinity. In the vast cosmic 
exchanges universal life comes and goes in unknown 
quantities. It is an enormous machinery of cogwheels, 
in which the first mover is the gnat, and the last wheel 
isthe Zodiac." 

■'The old argument for intelligence in nature from 
design in its mutual parts has been modified, but not 
invalidated, by the doctrine of evolution. It no longer 
rests on the " carpenter theory " of the universe, which 
viewed the parts of the world as having been cut out 
separately and then fitted together, as a piece of furni- 
ture is made in a shop ; but, as all things grew up to- 
gether and in a sense made one another, design is now 
seen to inhere in the ground-plan of the system which 
has involved these harmonious results ; and the marks 
of plan and purpose on the parts are proofs of intelli- 
gence in the system. Darwin himself affirmed that this 
system requires more teleology than it has displaced. 

Summing up under this head, we see that the world 
is intelligible, orderly, and purposeful. These are con- 
stituent characteristics of thought, and therefore at this 
point the world is essentially an intellectual fabric and 



THE NATURE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY 145 

is of a piece with our own minds. In the eloquent words 
of Dr. James Martineau : " What have we found by 
moving out along all radii into the infinite ? That the 
whole is woven together in one sublime tissue of intel- 
lectual relations, geometrical and physical — the realized 
original, of which all our science is but a partial copy. 
That science is the crowning product and supreme ex- 
pression of human reason. . . . Unless therefore it takes 
more mental faculty to construe the universe than to 
cause it, to read the book of nature than to write it, we 
must more than ever look upon its sublime face as the 
living appeal of thought to thought." 

5. The World as Sensibility 

A second fundamental aspect or faculty of the soul is 
its power of sensibility, and we now open the world-book 
to see if it presents evidence of being endowed with this 
power, or may be viewed as a symbol of sensibility. 

(i) Our own feelings are reflected and symbolized in 
our bodily activities. Bodily movements, flushed face 
and gleaming eyes, smiles and tears, are as plainly the 
language of feeling as words are the language of thought. 
Through these bodily signs we read the feelings of our 
fellow-men, and are confident we know them as certainly 
as we know our own. By an extension of the same 
principle, we can read the feelings of the higher domes- 
ticated animals. The joy that animates a dog or the fear 
that makes it cringe and whine is unmistakably known 
to us. Bodily behavior is a symbol of feeling on down 



146 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

through the animal scale, the feeling evidently becom- 
ing less conscious and vivid the lower the descent on 
the scale. We do not doubt that any vertebrate animal 
feels pain when it is wounded ; but does a worm or an 
oyster when it is cut in two ? It shrinks at the touch of 
the knife, and acts as though it were pained. As in the 
case of life, so in the case of feeling we pass no logical 
limit to sensibility as we go down the scale of the ani- 
mal kingdom. Feeling at the bottom of this scal^ may 
be very feeble and rudimentary, but we are compelled 
to believe that it is still experienced. Even when we 
cross the border or turn the loop into the vegetable 
kingdom, we still meet with activities, especially such as 
are seen in sensitive plants, that betray feeling, though 
of so low a grade as to be beyond the power of our con- 
sciousness to conceive it. In a similar way we are led 
to trace the manifestations of feeling down through in- 
organic matter to the vibrations of atoms and electrons. 
As the activities of human bodies are to us the symbols 
of sensibility, so we may, or must, view the activities of 
all matter as symbols of feeling, however faint and blind 
it may be. 

We may not be able to interpret the feeling expressed 
in nature to any great extent. The feelings of the 
higher animals are often plainly disclosed. The wagging 
tail and smiling countenance and lively bark of the dog 
and the gushing song of the bird are unmistakable ex- 
pressions of joy. Animal cries of pain are often start- 
lingly human in their expressiveness and pathos. When 



THE NATURE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY 147 

we pass below animal into vegetable life, and still lower 
into inorganic matter, we find the symbols of feeling in 
nature, growing ever less definite and clear. It is true 
that we attribute moods to nature. We speak of the 
hope of spring, the joy of summer, and the melancholy 
of autumn, of glad sunshine and sad skies, of the sighing 
of the wind and the moan of the sea, of the gloom of 
the forest and the wrath of the storm, but it may be said 
that these are poetic figures of speech. Yet in using 
them may we not speak better than we know ? The fact 
is that nature, with its many-colored aspects, its mobile 
features and changing hues, does awaken in us these vari- 
ous feelings. It is a harp of a thousand strings that re- 
sponds to the whole range of our emotions, or a vast sound- 
ing board that reenforces our feelings and gives them 
depth and richness and power. Whatever our tone of 
feeling or mood, whether of joy or sorrow, hope or melan- 
choly, we can find it expressed in some aspect of nature. 
Nature excites our emotions just as it awakens our intel- 
ligence. What is the explanation of this fact if it is not 
that the fabric of nature is woven of threads of feeling 
even as it is woven of threads of thought ? It touches 
our emotional chords as it touches our intellectual facul- 
ties, and thereby shows its kinship with our hearts as it 
shows its affinity with our minds. What makes us feel 
must ultimately spring from what can itself feel. 

(2) This general mark of sensibility in nature becomes 
specially clear and vivid in the beauty and sublimity of 
nature. The beautiful and sublime are among our 



148 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

richest and noblest feelings, and we seek to express them 
in all the varied and glorious forms of art. The highest 
efforts of genius and the costliest fabrics of human toil 
and skill are devoted to this end. We never doubt the 
meaning of these works of art. Painting, sculpture, and 
architecture are a language as well understood by the 
feelings as are spoken or printed words by the mind. 
But the supremest achievements of human genius and 
skill are poor and pitiful compared with the sublimity 
and beauty of nature. Nature is a vast canvas set in a 
stupendous frame. The sky by night is a glittering 
dome, gleaming with brilliant points as though sown 
with diamonds or filled with a shower of white sparks. 
The day dawns as a rose unfolds its petals, blossoms 
into the splendor of noon, and closes with the dying 
glories of the sunset. The seasons are a procession of 
pictures and a pageantry of color. Spring comes smil- 
ing in green ; summer swathes itself in heavy folds of 
beauty ; autumn is rich in color, and even when shorn of 
its summer glory, it decks itself in bright shreds and 
patches and becomes a beggar in scarlet rags ; and win- 
ter robes itself in spotless white. Flowers are shaped 
and painted and perfumed into all lovely forms and de- 
lightful odors, birds are brilliantly arrayed, and insects, 
richly colored and enameled and bejeweled, are as winged 
flowers. Inorganic nature is adorned with beauty as well 
as living forms. Every landscape frames a picture, the 
mountains are stamped with sublimity, and the clouds are 
a gorgeous panorama. Crystals are frozen geometry, a 



THE NATURE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY 149 

snowflake is a marvelous bit of architecture, and even a 
common grain of sand under the microscope is a blazing 
jewel. The smallest things in nature are given some 
edge of adornment or glint of color that makes them 
beautiful. Tiny diatoms are wonderful in their delicate 
tracery of intricate patterns and in their rich colors, and 
are the envy of the artist. The microscope can show 
nothing that has escaped the finishing touch of perfec- 
tion, and the telescope reveals no unsightly stars. 
There is no depth of the sea or hidden nook in a forest 
that does not have its profusion of beautiful forms. All 
nature is drenched and saturated with beauty. It has 
soaked in among its atoms and stained its ultimate ele- 
ments ; or rather it exudes from its central core and 
cause. 

What is the meaning of all this beauty .-* The doctrine 
of evolution comes forward with a utilitarian explanation. 
It says that color is protective against enemies or attrac- 
tive to friends. " Flowers," says Mr. Darwin, " rank 
amongst the most beautiful productions of nature ; but 
they have been rendered conspicuous in contrast with the 
green leaves, and in consequence at the same time beauti- 
ful, so that they may be easily observed by insects. I 
have come to this conclusion from finding it an invariable 
rule that when a flower is fertilized by the wind, it never 
has a gayly colored corolla. Hence we may conclude 
that, if insects had not been developed on the face of 
the earth, our plants would not have been decked with 
beautiful flowers, but would have produced only such 



150 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

poor flowers as we see on our fir, oak, nut, and ash trees, 
on grasses, spinach, docks, and nettles, which are all 
fertilized through the agency of the winds." 

This theory does explain some facts, and is so far 
true. Natural selection has sifted out the beautiful 
colors of many flowers ; butterflies and bees have in- 
directly painted the lily and the rose. But this theory 
falls short of explaining all or even a considerable part 
of the beauty in nature. Utility has no relation to the 
gorgeous panorama of the skies or the glories of the 
autumn forest, and it cannot be connected with the ele- 
mental beauty that saturates the world. 

Beauty, then, like thought, is a revelation of the nature 
of the ontological world, and shows us that ultimate 
reality is endowed with a sense of the beautiful. It is 
another appeal of spirit to spirit. It is intolerable to 
our thought to believe that lumpish matter, without idea 
or sense, could create in us the glorious vision of beauty we 
experience in the phenomenal world. This phenomenal 
beauty can be rooted only in ontological beauty, and 
ultimate reality cannot create in us anything it does not 
experience itself. Beauty is another witness to the 
spiritual nature of the world. A little child, quoted by 
Newman Smyth, in his "Through Science to Faith" 
went to the center of this truth with the intuition of the 
child heart, when, gazing into the beauty of an evening 
sky, it said, " Mother, I know what makes it so ; God 
gets beneath it and shines through it." 

(3) Another special form of sensibility rooted in nature 



THE NATURE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY 151 

is music. Music, broadly speaking, is the language of 
feeling, as words are the language of thought ; only, 
music expresses feeling more intimately than words ex- 
press thought, for it is feeling itself thrown into rich 
rhythmic states. The resources of music to express the 
infinite varieties of feeling are as flexible and inexhaust- 
ible as the varieties themselves. The soul pours out its 
joys and sorrows and all its many-colored emotions in 
a flood of melodic utterance. Through human voice, 
speaking tubes, quivering strings, and resonant wood, 
metal and membrane, in simple melody and solemn 
procession of stately chords, in song and symphony, 
hymn and anthem, ballad and oratorio, in sad minor 
chords and jubilant major strains, in tonal storms that 
come up in mighty surge and swell and crash from the 
depths of the orchestra or piano and break in light spray 
and foam over all the strings and keys, in the deep-toned 
boom of the organ pipe and in filmy weavings of scales 
and trills, the many-hued iridescence of melodic fancy, 
the soul of man gives expression to its profoundest and 
gayest and most intricate moods. In joy and in sorrow, 
at wedding and at funeral, at work and in worship, in 
peace and in war, man sings. As a thought has not 
reached its fullest and richest expression until it is in- 
tensified and glorified into poetry, so an emotion has not 
found its deepest and most satisfying outlet until it 
has gushed and soared into song. 

What is the relation of music to nature ? There is 
some music in nature itself. Birds are the most musi- 



152 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

cal of animals, and their pure liquid notes drench the 
forests with song. Their song obeys true melodic laws, 
and in some instances can be expressed in musical nota- 
tion. There is also a musical element in all the sounds 
and voices of nature. The hum of insects, the rustle of 
leaves, the whistle of the wind, the patter of rain, the 
murmur of streams, the surge of the sea, the roll of 
thunder, the deep boom of the cataract, — these, if not 
musical, are at least the raw materials of music, and 
often affect us deeply and express and enrich our moods. 
The sounds produced by nature itself are hardly ever 
discordant, a jangle of mere noise, but are rhythmical 
and concordant. " The very echoes tossed to and fro 
among the mountains in melodious tones testify that the 
framework of the earth, with its resilient atmosphere, is 
a mighty instrument of music." ^ 

But music goes still deeper into the constitution of 
nature. All music is expressed through material agen- 
cies. Externally, music is the air thrown into rhythmi- 
cal vibrations that are controlled by exact mathematical 
relations. The complexity of motion agitating the air 
when an orchestra is playing is beyond our power of 
conception. The sea of the air is all crossed and re- 
crossed and overlaid many fold with sound waves that 
combine in the most intricate forms, and yet in which 
each wave preserves its identity and contributes its part 

1 This quotation, together with the other quotations under this head, is 
from " God and Music," by John Harrington Edwards, The whole book is 
a beautiful and eloquent exposition of the argument at this point. 



THE NATURE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY 153 

to the complex whole. " With all its plasticity and free 
range of form, from the airiest of swift-winged notes to 
the somber requiem or measured fugue, no elemental 
force is more bound by exact statutes of unbending 
nature. Mathematics are as fixed as fate, and music, in 
its physical constitution, is nothing but number applied 
to sound." The air is constituted with this rhythmic 
property, and thus music is rooted in the outer world. 

But this is only the first entrance of this root into 
nature ; it penetrates through the air to the instru- 
ment that is throwing the air into vibration. The par- 
ticles of the wood or metal or membrane of which the 
instrument is composed are in a state of vibration that 
exactly matches and creates the vibration of the air. 
The wood or metal, then, is also musical in its consti- 
tution ; its pores are full of melody. All substances 
have this property in greater or less degrees, and thus 
music pervades all nature, and all matter is saturated 
with it. 

The diatonic scale, while it has been developed in 
human experience and is subject to some variation, yet 
is rooted in physical and mathematical laws and is en- 
dowed with qualities of universality if not finality, 
and thus the basis of music is built into the framework 
of nature. A musical note, such as is emitted by a 
vibrating string, is a complex structure and may be 
described as a whole orchestra in itself. It is not a 
single series of sound waves of uniform length, but a 
highly complex combination of many series of waves of 



154 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

different amplitudes. The string not only vibrates as a 
whole, but also breaks into segments, and its halves, 
thirds, and so on, vibrate separately, thus producing 
"overtones." It is these overtones that give individual 
color and character to the tones of different instruments 
and voices. " Without these spirit-like attendants of 
musical notes all voices and instruments would have the 
same quality, becoming monotonous and insipid. . . . 
Ministering spirits of viewless sound, they furnish the 
endlessly varied coloring of music." 

Thus music is rooted down in the foundation of na- 
ture. Like beauty, it has soaked in among the very 
atoms. The universe is musical in its constitution ; it 
sings at its heart. It is a vast organ with multitudinous 
pipes, ranging from the deep-toned pipes of the sea and 
sky to the tiny vibrations that lie far beyond the limit of 
human hearing ; a grand orchestra in which all the ele- 
ments and forces and forms of nature are assembled as 
instruments. All possible notes and chords, melodies 
and symphonies, lie latent in this mighty instrument, 
ready at the touch of skilled fingers to gush forth in 
sweet rills and surging floods of melodic utterance. 
Nature is woven of chords and songs, and is exquisitely 
tuned and sympathetic to sing with our joy and sob 
with our sorrow. 

The only sufficient and satisfying explanation of this 
musical nature of the phenomenal world is that the 
ontological cause of the world is also musical in essence. 
That which creates in us the glorious world of music 



THE NATURE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY 155 

must itself be musical. " He that made the ear, shall 
he not hear ? " The music of the world is another 
appeal of spirit to spirit. " Its tonal beauty reveals a 
creative love of the beautiful in sound, and also an in- 
tention in the Creator to awaken the same in intelHgent 
beings, and share its joys with them. Design is shown 
not more in the mathematical regimen of music than in 
the manifold beauty of its colored forms adapted to 
spiritual ends. . . . The Infinite one is the embodi- 
ment of sanity and integrity, yet clothes himself in robes 
of visual and audible beauty, as fitting garments of that 
holiness which is perfect wholeness. And this is his 
gracious will for his intelligent creatures, that they shall 
be like him in solid structure of character, and, like 
him, shall put on the exquisite, joy-giving grace of the 
Beautiful." 

God is its author, and not man ; he laid 
The keynote of all harmonies ; he planned 

All perfect combinations, and he made 
Us so that we could hear and understand. 

(4) Is there any gleam or indication of ethical sensi- 
bility in nature .-' We are now entering the region of 
highest values where all things are weighed in the 
balances of spiritual and eternal worth. The human 
soul rises to its highest power and expression in its 
ethical life. In the disposition and exercise of benevo- 
lence and righteousness, man is at his highest and 
noblest and best. Conscience is his crown, and his 
moral virtues are more splendid jewels than all his 



156 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

brilliant intellectual powers. The rank of man on the 
scale of life is fixed by his moral stature, and the worth 
of the individual soul is measured by the same mark. 
The fact that in our unitary soul-life moral elements are 
inextricably interwoven with intellectual and emotional 
elements, raises the presumption that the intellectual and 
emotional fabric of nature has ethical threads woven 
into its texture. Ethical life, being the highest element 
of life, comes to clear and full expression only at the 
top of the scale of life, and can exhibit only its dim 
beginnings down near the bottom. But the top shows 
what is latent at the bottom, and man, as we have seen 
all the way through this argument, is the blossom that 
shows what is in the root. What is explicit in man is 
impHcit in nature. 

One element of moral sensibility is benevolence, a 
disposition of good will and happiness, the altruistic 
spirit that binds our human world into brotherhood and 
suffuses it with joy. We cannot find this principle as 
richly and radiantly developed in nature as in man, but 
it is unquestionably in nature in a rudimentary degree. 
The animal world is a scene of satisfaction and of joy. 
Domestic animals, especially the dog, exhibit many 
signs of pleasure, and we cannot hear the song of birds 
in the forest without feeling that they are living out 
their little lives in happiness. All animals down to the 
lowest derive satisfaction from the gratification of their 
appetites and from their activities, for the normal ex- 
ercise of any organ or nerve or muscle is attended with 



THE NATURE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY 157 

a degree of pleasure. The play of animals, especially 
of the young, is one of the most significant features of 
their life. It is a pleasant sight to see dogs at play and 
to note how closely they repeat the pranks and the very 
tricks of playing children. The animal world blossoms 
with joy at the top, and we must suppose that some 
degree of satisfaction saturates the tree of life down 
through all its cells to its lowest roots. 

But is not this bright picture darkened with strife 
and disease and death ? Is not nature " red in tooth 
and claw with ravine" so that it is rather saturated with 
pain than with joy .-' Mr. Wallace discusses this point 
in his " Darwinism " under the head, " The Ethical 
Aspect of the Struggle for Existence." He maintains 
" that the supposed ' torments ' and ' miseries ' of ani- 
mals have little real existence, but are the reflection of 
the imagined sensations of cultivated men and women 
in similar circumstances; and that the amount of actual 
suffering caused by the struggle for existence among 
animals is altogether insignificant." " On the whole, 
then, we conclude," he says, "that the popular idea of 
the struggle for existence entailing misery and pain on 
the animal world is the very reverse of the truth. What 
it really brings about is the maximum of life and of the 
enjoyment of life with the minimum of suffering and 
pain. Given the necessity of death and reproduction, 
— and without these there could have been no pro- 
gressive development of the organic world, — and it is 
difficult even to imagine a system by which a greater 



158 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

balance of happiness could have been secured. And 
this view was evidently that of Darwin himself, who 
thus concludes his chapter on the struggle for existence : 
* When we reflect on this struggle, we may console our- 
selves with the full belief that the war of nature is not 
incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally 
prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the 
happy survive and multiply.' " 

Ethical sensibility comes to its fullest expression in 
nature in its altruism. Mother love is a strong and 
beautiful affection in the higher animals, and it will pay 
the last full measure of sacrifice ; and the altruistic 
principle runs down through the whole constitution of 
nature. The cells of the very lowest organisms, whether 
animal or vegetable, work together in social colonies 
and serve one another. Service and sacrifice are every- 
where woven into the web of the world. Henry Drum- 
mond was the discoverer of this truth, or at least was 
the first to see it clearly and bring it out fully. In his 
book on " The Ascent of Man," he shows that " the 
struggle for hfe" is balanced by "the struggle for the life 
of others," and that in the second of these two principles 
" lies a prophecy, a suggestion of the day of Altruism." 
" Take the tiniest protoplasmic cell," he says, "immerse 
it in a suitable medium, and presently it will perform 
two great acts — the two which sum up life, which con- 
stitute the eternal distinction between the living and the 
dead — Nutrition and Reproduction. At one moment, 
in pursuance of the Struggle for Life, it will call in 



THE NATURE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY 159 

matter from without, and assimilate it to itself; at an- 
other moment, in pursuance of the Struggle for the 
Life of Others, it will set a portion of that matter apart, 
add to it, and finally give it away to form another life. 
Even at its dawn, life is receiver and giver ; even in 
protoplasm is Self-ism and Other-ism. These two 
tendencies are not fortuitous. They have been lived 
into existence. They are not grafts on the tree of life ; 
they are its nature, its essential life. They are not 
painted on the canvas, but woven through it." 

In poetic language he traces the evolution of this 
principle : " Love is not a late arrival, an afterthought, 
with Creation. It is not a novelty of a romantic civili- 
zation. It is not a pious word of religion. Its roots 
began to grow with the first cell of life v/hich budded 
on this earth. How great it is, the history of humanity 
bears witness : but how old it is and how solid, how 
bound up with the very constitution of the world, how 
from the first of time an eternal part of it, we are only 
now beginning to perceive. For the evolution of Love 
is a piece of pure Science. Love did not descend out of 
the clouds like rain or snow. It was not distilled on 
earth. And few of the romances which in after years 
were to cluster round this immortal word are more 
vvTonderful than the story of its birth and growth. 
Partly a product of crushed lives and exterminated 
species, and partly of the choicest blossoms and sweet- 
est essences that ever came from the tree of life, it 
reached its spiritual perfection after a history the most 



l6o THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

Strange and checkered that the pages of Nature have to 
record. What Love was at first, how crude and sour 
and embryonic a thing, it is impossible to conceive. 
But from age to age, with immeasurable faith and 
patience, by cultivations continually repeated, by trans- 
plantings endlessly varied, the unrecognizable germ of 
this new fruit was husbanded to its maturity, and be- 
came the tree on which humanity, society, and civiliza- 
tion were ultimately borne." Evolution is thus not 
simply a tale of battle, but is also a love story. 

Newman Smyth, in a chapter on the " Moral Charac- 
ter of Nature" in his "Through Science to Faith," con- 
cludes his argument on this point as follows : " Follow in 
imagination this process of development on and on, 
until life on the earth becomes aglow with sensation, and 
in ever- varied forms is capable of harmonious adaptations 
and the satisfied appetencies of the animal world as we 
know it. Measure the vital value of it at its height, 
when at last it has broken forth into supernal joy and 
gladness in our human consciousness of life as some- 
thing nobly to be won, and grandly worth the living. 
An immeasurable distance has been traversed along this 
way marked by the sign of vital worth. A vast gain 
has been made in pleasurable capacity. The happiness 
possible to a man, as compared with the happiness pos- 
sible to a monad, is high as the heavens above the 
earth. But the traversing this vast distance and the 
gain of this high power constitute a revelation ; hereby 
is made manifest the moral character of the evolution. 



THE NATURE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY i6l 

The end reached is a good end. Naturalism, therefore, 
as judged by the ages of accumulated contributions to 
sensitive capacity for happy life has worked well : 
naturalism, when seen thus in the large, takes on moral 
character ; the order on the whole is a worthy order." 

The order of the world also points to a moral prin- 
ciple at its center, radiating through all its parts. It is 
a world of law and truth and honesty in its constitution, 
and thus it imposes the obligation of these virtues upon 
man and affords him a field in which he can live a free 
and full ethical life. Virtue is obedience to its laws, and 
vice is disobedience, and therefore it rewards the one 
and punishes the other. While nature cannot exhibit 
the full flower and spiritual glory of conscience in its 
lower organisms as it can in man, yet it shows its moral 
sympathies all the way down the scale of life. 

Prophets and poets have ever beheld in nature a 
grand witness to truth and duty ; they have heard 
solemn voices rolling out of its skies, over its seas and 
through its forests, preaching righteousness and rever- 
ence. The Psalmist saw that "The heavens declare 
the glory of God " ; and Wordsworth saw Duty in- 
wrought into the whole fabric of nature : — ^ 

Flowers laugh before thee on their beds 
And fragrance on thy footing treads ; 
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong; 
And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and 
strong. 

The germs of ethical sensibility are thus found in the 

lowest roots of nature, and they evolve with its evolu- 



l62 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

tion. Following the principle of our reasoning, we are 
led to the conclusion that the ethical nature of the phe- 
nomenal world points to the ethical nature of the onto- 
logical cause of the world. An unethical cause cannot 
produce ethical sensibility. What gives conscience has 
conscience. 

6. The World as Will 

The third fundamental faculty of the soul is will, and 
we now open the phenomenal book of the world to see 
if it can be interpreted as the symbol of this mental 
power. 

(i) Our own bodily activities are preeminently the 
expression of our volitions or acts of will While these 
activities express our thoughts and feelings, as we have 
seen, yet they more directly and fully express our 
volitions, for they are the immediate means through 
which the will acts. We will to speak, or walk, or 
move the hand, and instantly the tongue responds with 
speech, or the foot or hand with the appropriate motion. 
We are immediately aware of our will as the occasion 
or cause of our bodily movements. What we know ex- 
ternally and phenomenally as motions of our bodily 
organs, we know internally and ontologically as actions 
of our will ; that is, the bodily motions are conveyed to 
us through our senses as phenomena, but the actions of 
the will are immediately known to us as states of the 
soul or ontological realities. Our bodily activities are 
thus the external symbols of internal states or acts of 
will. 



THE NATURE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY 163 

This relation can now be run down through nature, 
as was done in the similar cases of thought and sensi- 
bility. The bodily activities of the higher animals are 
undoubtedly the symbols of will similar to our human 
will. The walking of a dog or horse is as clearly due 
to the volition of these animals as is the walking of a 
man. As we descend the scale of life, we come to no 
logical limit where we can say that will fades out and 
utterly ceases to act. The flight of an insect, or the 
crawling of a worm, or even the opening and closing of 
an oyster's shell is still an act of will, however low may 
be its directing intelligence and however instinctive it 
may be. When we pass on down into the vegetable 
world and down into the inorganic world, we still en- 
counter physical activities, and we have met with no 
reason why we should deny or doubt that these external 
phenomenal activities are also the symbols of internal 
ontological will, though it may be inconceivably lower 
in its volitional nature than is our own will. 

The very nature of will as we experience it is activ- 
ity, and it expresses itself in symbols of motion. But 
the fundamental nature of matter is also motion. Not 
only are all masses of matter in motion, but its constitu- 
ent molecules and atoms and electrons are in a state of 
violent activity. All its qualities of color, sound, odor, 
taste, and touch are forms of molecular activity, and the 
very atoms and electrons are now thought to be ether 
whirls or some mode of motion. As motion is the 
symbol to us of the activity of our will, the inference is 



164 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

direct and strong that the ether whirls of atoms are the 
symbols of volitional activity, and thus the mighty mass 
of the universe becomes resolved into pure will. As 
will is the internal reality of our bodily activities, so is 
will the ontological reality of all phenomena. This is 
the central doctrine of Schopenhauer which he wrought 
out with great fullness and strength of reasoning in his 
" The World as Will and Idea." 

We reach the same conclusion by a somewhat differ- 
ent approach. When we oppose our two hands to each 
other and exert our will equally upon them, the stress of 
the one is balanced by the stress of the other. The 
more we press with the right hand, the more we press 
with the left, and thus the equilibrium is maintained. 
We are immediately aware of the exertion of the will in 
the right arm, and at the same time we are also immedi- 
ately aware of what is resisting this arm : it is the equal 
exertion of the will in the left arm. In this case we 
know the ontological reality that is stressing the right 
arm, and we equally know the ontological reality that is 
resisting it, which is the will stressing the left arm. 
Both the internal action of the will in the right arm and 
the external resistance that is opposing the right arm 
are ontologically known to us, and both of these forces 
are will, one and the same will. If we press our hand 
against another person's hand, we again know that the 
ontological cause of the pressure both in our hand and 
in the opposing hand is human will. 

Now let us press our hand against an immovable 



THE NATURE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY 165 

wall or rock. The rock resists our will precisely as in 
the former case our left hand resisted our right hand. 
The more we press our hand against the rock, the more 
the rock presses against our hand ; that is, the rock acts 
just as though it were another will opposing our will. 
All matter acts upon us in this way. When we press 
upon it, it presses upon us ; and it instantly increases 
or decreases its resistance so as to match and balance 
our resistance. In a word, matter acts as though it 
were a will. All the pressures, strains, motions, vibra- 
tions, and activities of every kind by which matter acts 
upon and affects us are so many manifestations of will. 
As when our left hand resists our right hand we know 
what is opposing our will and know it is will, so when 
any material thing is opposing the action of our will, we 
infer it is another will that is opposing us. 

The whole material universe behaves as though it were 
will. The gravitation that holds us in its grasp acts as 
though it were a hand energized by will. The gravita- 
tional forces that bind the planets to the sun act as 
though they were so many mighty muscles, energized 
by will, that stretch from the sun to the planets and 
hold them in their orbits. When we resist gravitation, 
we are putting our wills against this cosmic will. The 
only conception we can have of a pound weight is the 
strain it puts on our will ; a hundred-pound weight is a 
correspondingly larger strain of will ; and we conceive 
a ton as a strain correspondingly heavy. When the 
astronomer computes in tons the energy of gravitation 



l66 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

that holds the earth in its orbit, we try to conceive it as 
a strain of will, — a strain, of course, immensely beyond 
our power, but still conceived in terms of will. In de- 
creasing as the square of the distance, gravitation loses 
control over material objects in accordance with the 
same law our own will obeys, and, as we have already 
seen (page 75), is thereby assimilated to our will. All 
the forces of nature can be understood and are best ex- 
plained as expressions of will. Chemical affinity is a 
craving of atom for atom and of molecule for molecule. 
In some instances this craving is like a feeble desire, and 
in others it is a fiery thirst and fierce passion that nothing 
can resist. Cohesion and adhesion are attractive energies 
that resemble will. Gravitation is a universal will that 
binds all the stars into one cosmos that pulses as one 
organism. The whole universe is under the stress and 
strain of will. From the vibrations of atoms to the 
sweep of planets and suns in the heavens, it behaves as 
will ; it is striving and straining, craving and grasping, 
throughout. At every point it opposes its will to ours 
and treats us as we treat it. As our bodies are the 
phenomenal expressions of our wills, so is the material 
universe the phenomenon of a mightier will. 

(2) But will is not mere stress and strain, a blind 
craving and striving ; it is the activity of the soul 
directed by inteUigence and achieving ends. Will em- 
bodies itself in deeds. A deed is an act that bears the 
marks of purpose ; it is an ideal realized. All our rational 
actions are deeds. Some actions are done once for all 



THE NATURE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY 167 

and pass away, leaving no visible trace to tell their tale. 
Other actions are repeated until they grow into habits ; 
and some habits become so persistent that they are con- 
stant fixed actions or modes of action. Our language, 
ingrained beliefs and feelings, and our personal habits are 
such persistent and permanent deeds. They are still ex- 
pressions of will, the will molded into habit, though they 
may have grown so automatic that the elements of con- 
scious choice and effort have largely faded out of them. 
The whole mass of deeds and habits of one's will tends 
to grow into a mutually interdependent and consistent 
system, which is the framework and structure of one's 
character and life. This framework, though it is 
fashioned out of the elements of will that may seem 
ethereal and plastic as spirit or breath, may yet be stiff 
as steel and solid as granite, so that it will endure the 
most violent blows and shocks of life. A strong will is 
one that has fashioned itself into such a system of 
habitual deeds as will not easily yield to pressure from 
other wills, and may withstand the whole world. A 
weak will is one that has small resisting power and 
easily yields to the impact of other wills. 

Now will as expressed in nature bears the marks of 
deed and habit. We nowhere see blind, aimless striv- 
ing in nature, but all its energies flow into and fill the 
molds of definite aims and ends. All that has been said 
in the foregoing pages on law and order, intelligence 
and purpose in nature, bears pn this point, and is proof 
of this principle. There are no lawless and purposeless 



1 68 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

results in nature, but everything beautifully obeys its 
laws and fulfills its own place and purpose. A crystal 
is as certainly a deed as a cathedral ; the orbit of a 
planet, as a curve swept by the hand of a mathematician 
or an artist. Crystal and curve are acts of will done for 
a purpose, and such acts are deeds. All the facts of 
nature are intelligible, and such facts are deeds, em- 
bodied will, or will that has achieved its ends. When a 
fact in nature is persistent and fixed, such as a stone or 
a star, that fact presents the appearance of a habit of 
will or a constant repetition of the act that constitutes 
the persistent act or fact. The whole universe is will in 
constant action, and this constitutes its persistence and 
stability. Though its mighty framework is more rigid 
than stone or steel, yet this framework is just ethereal 
spirit or will incessantly repeating its habitual actions or 
fixed deeds. All the facts or deeds of nature harmonize 
and cohere into a system or cosmos, which is the con- 
sistent and complete expression of one will. If we start 
with our own will as an ontological reality casting itself 
into deeds which are expressed in the phenomena of 
our bodily activities, there is no logical stopping place 
until we have reached the view that the cosmos is the 
phenomenon of a will energizing in a vast system of 
deeds. 

(3) Does the will we see exhibited in nature have 
the attribute of freedom .■' By freedom we mean in 
our own experience the power of self-choice and self- 
action ; the power to choose and follow our own ideas 



THE NATURE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY 169 

and ideals as opposed to action forced upon us from 
without. Such freedom is of the very nature of will, 
and will, without some degree of spontaneity, would 
not be will. We do not doubt such self-action in man 
and in the higher animals, and we must suppose that 
some degree of it persists, as we descend the scale of 
life, even in the lowest organisms. The essential ele- 
ments of will at the top must remain at the bottom. 
We can have direct experience of the freedom of will 
only in the case of our own will, but as our freedom 
expresses itself in phenomenal bodily activities, so may 
we infer that physical symbols express spontaneity all 
the way down the scale of life. 

But at this point we encounter the difficulty that 
nature is governed by law, and law seems to bind will 
and render it incapable of freedom. The bodily sym- 
bols of men and of the higher animals may admit of 
interpretation as the phenomenal expressions of free- 
dom, but will the operations of inorganic nature, the 
fixed lines and angles of the crystal, the invariable 
attraction of gravitation, and the unchanging sweep of 
planets in their orbits, admit of such interpretation .'' 
The difficulty appears formidable, but it appears more 
formidable than it really is, for we meet the same fact 
in our own experience. Are law and freedom mutually 
antagonistic and exclusive in our own lives ? We live in 
a world of law, and yet we find it a field for the full 
exercise of our freedom. Even the fixed laws of nature, 
chemical affinity and gravitation, light and electricity, 



lyo THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

do not bind us, but are pliant and plastic in our hands ; 
not that we can abrogate or change their modes of 
action, but we can so combine and direct them that 
they become our nimble servitors and work out our 
purposes and thus further and fulfill our freedom. 

Not only so, but our will is subject to internal laws 
of its own. Its action is not aimless striving and a blind 
striking out, but it is guided by reason and is subject 
to the play of motives. An unguided, uncontrolled will 
would be a terrible monster, and such freedom would 
be a fearful fate. The will decides and acts, not with- 
out reason, but with reason, and any other kind of free- 
dom would be irrational and insane violence and folly. 
Yet such laws do not limit the freedom of the will, but 
rather furnish it with the ground and means of freedom. 
The steel track does not limit the liberty of the loco- 
motive, but gives it all the liberty it has. As long as 
the locomotive keeps on the track, it can be driven with 
speed and safety, but when it jumps the track, its liberty 
is gone. So the will is free as long as it plays within 
the grooves of reason and motive, but when it flies from 
these guides, it becomes ungovernable and violent and 
works its own destruction. 

Our will is subject to still further apparent limitation 
of its freedom in habit. Habit is crystallized or capital- 
ized will, or will that through frequent and long repe- 
tition has become automatic, so that the element of 
conscious deliberation, choice, and effort has been out- 
grown and left behind. Thus we ordinarily walk with- 



THE NATURE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY 171 

out trying to walk, or even thinking how we do it, 
almost as automatically as we breathe ; and in the same 
way we speak and carry on many of the activities of 
life. Such habits are a great saving of our conscious 
will power, as they hand over these activities to the 
mechanism of reflex action and relieve us of debate, 
decision, and effort. They become the smoothly worn 
grooves in which our will plays with the least exertion 
and friction. Such habit may, through heredity, be 
crystallized into instinct, which is hereditary habit that 
has lost all conscious choice and effort and acts auto- 
matically. Were it not that the will is thus subject to 
the control of reason and motive, habit, and instinct, we 
could never know what others are going to do, or what 
we are going to do ourselves ; and thus all plan and 
foresight would become impossible and our human 
world would be reduced to pure anarchy and chaos. 
But because the will is subject to law, we can construct 
plans and foresee and control the future and conduct 
our human life according to reason and order. 

Now the point before us is that habit does not limit 
the freedom of the will, though at first sight it may seem 
to do so ; for it is the will that molds itself into the fixed 
form of habit. It is true that when habit is thoroughly 
shaped and hardened, it does tend to confine the will in 
the groove it has worn and may even bind it with fetters 
as of fate ; that is the very purpose of habit, and it 
holds out a great hope and a great warning. When the 
habit is good, it has become the fixed capital and strong 



172 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

character of the soul, its wealth and joy. And when 
the habit is evil, it becomes the prison house of the soul 
which strong crying and tears may not break through. 
Nevertheless, the habit was not forced upon the will 
from without, but was the will's own choice and action, 
and it is, therefore, the capitalized freedom of the will 
itself. Even instinct is not bondage, but is just the way 
the will wants to act and may be viewed as the most 
perfect freedom. The will, therefore, plays within the 
grooves of reason and motive, habit and instinct, and 
finds its freedom unimpaired. 

We are now in a position to apply these principles to 
the case of will in nature. They show us that the fact 
that nature is under law does not exclude freedom from 
any will that may be in it. For law in nature may still be 
viewed as the expression of reason, as we have already 
seen it to be, and such law does not bind freedom, but is 
its ground and means. The laws of nature, however fixed 
they may be, are none the less the choice of reason, and 
this is freedom. And, further, the laws of nature may 
be viewed as habits and instincts of the will of nature. 
The characteristic feature of habit and especially of in- 
stinct is unvarying regularity ; and thus the regularity 
of nature, so far from excluding freedom, includes it : 
for these laws, habits, instincts, however regular and 
fixed they may be, are the grooves in which the great 
will of nature plays and finds its freedom. 

We are now ready to draw the conclusion, on the same 
lines we have hitherto followed, that the phenomenal 



THE NATURE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY 173 

world of nature is a manifestation of will. The world 
bears all the marks of will : it is activity, moving to ends, 
in accordance with reason and habit. The phenomenal 
world being a manifestation of will, its ontological cause 
must be will also. What manifests will must be will. 

7. General Characters of the World 

In our study of the soul as a bit of ontological reality, 
we found it marked with the general characters of unity, 
growth, law, habit, freedom, and purpose. These same 
marks have already emerged in some degree as char- 
acters of the phenomenal world, but they now may be 
set forth more distinctly. 

( I ) The unity of the world may be traced along various 
lines. The endless forms of matter may be reduced to 
a few chemical elements, and these not only constitute 
the earth, but their presence is proved in the sun and 
stars, so that the conclusion is strong that all planets 
and suns are built of the same stuff ; and thus the uni- 
verse is a unit in its physical composition. Several lines 
of evidence also converge towards the conclusion that 
the chemical elements are really compound and are re- 
solvable into fewer simpler elements. This fact points 
to one final element as the ultimate physical constituent 
of the universe, and this would reduce the cosmos to 
absolute physical unity. 

The energies of nature point to the same conclusion. 
Light and electricity are plainly the same thing in the 
sun and stars that they are on earth. The various forms 



174 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

of energy, chemical affinity, light, heat, electricity, are 
mutually convertible and are proved to be variants of 
one energy which is probably universal in the cosmos. 
Gravitation also extends throughout the known universe 
and binds it, with its subtle yet powerful threads, into 
one organism. Whether gravitation and electricity are 
convertible is not yet known, but they are believed to be 
related. These facts point to a unity of energy that 
pervades the universe. 

As to the universality of life in the cosmos, little direct 
evidence can be adduced. The so-called "canals" in 
Mars, while accepted by some astronomers as strips of 
vegetation that spring up along artificial water courses 
and therefore as evidence of intelligent life and activity, 
are given a different explanation by other observers and 
are as yet too doubtful a basis for such a conclusion ; 
yet it is difficult to resist the conviction, arising out of 
the general grounds of analogy, that the range of life 
and intelligence does extend throughout the universe. 
The universe thus reduces to unity of composition, energy, 
and life, and becomes a cosmos organized around one 
center and throbbing with one pulse. Since all its ac- 
tivities are phenomenal manifestations of life, thought, 
sensibility, and will, the meaning of the unity of the cos- 
mos is that it is the manifestation of one life, one mind, 
one sensibility, and one will, and these all converge into 
one soul or spirit. 

(2) The next general character of the soul is growth 
or evolution, and this fact is seen stamped upon the 



THE NATURE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY 175 

world in all its parts. The plant unfolds from seed to 
fruit, and this instance is typical of all processes of 
growth, whether in a crystal or a man. The doctrine 
of evolution applies the same general process to the de- 
velopment of species. That all the multitudinous species 
of plants and animals are descended by genetic connec- 
tion from a few ancient ancestors, or possibly from a 
single cell, is the accepted science of the day. Scien- 
tists differ as to the means and method of the process, 
but they agree as to the process itself. The same fun- 
damental process is also applied to the origin of mole- 
cules and atoms, which are conceived as having originated 
out of the formless ether through ages of evolution, com- 
pared with which the ages of geological and biological 
evolution are supposed to be short. At the other ex- 
treme of magnitude, evolution is applied to the solar 
system, which has evolved out of a vast tract of star dust 
or meteoric matter, and the same conception is extended 
through the whole heavens. Thus the universe in its 
parts and in its totality is a growth, each stage evolving 
out of a preceding stage and passing on into a succeed- 
ing stage. In this respect, also, it behaves as though it 
were a manifestation of mind, for it exhibits on a grand 
scale the same processes of growth that we experience 
in our own souls. 

(3) The world is also subject to law. The soul, as 
we saw before, at first appears to be a scene of hopeless 
confusion, but under closer examination it is found to be 
a scene of exact law and harmony. The world exhibits 



176 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

the same features. Through all its seeming tangle and 
chaos of events, science has been able to trace threads 
of causation and succession that weave nature into one 
web of law and order. Even where some of the threads 
appear broken and the web shows gaps, it is still believed, 
with all the confidence of religious faith, that the threads 
of law maintain their continuity and the web its pattern. 
Nature abhors a vacuum in the reign and range of law, 
and the whole superstructure of science is built upon 
this basal faith. This fundamental fact in the texture of 
nature is another feature in its fabric that relates it to 
our mental experience and discloses its mental nature. 

(4) Habit is another character we find in the soul, 
and the same fact broadly marks nature. Not only is 
the human world cast in the molds of habit, personal, 
social, and racial, national and international, but the 
animal world is also a mass of habits, which are deep 
grooves in which animal life moves, and of instincts, 
which are still deeper grooves which have been worn 
down through many generations. Passing into the in- 
organic world we find matter exhibiting the character of 
habit. What has been bent or creased once bends or 
creases more readily along the same line again, the stream 
carves out its own channel, nature tends ever to repeat 
itself, and these are hints and germs of habit. We may 
take a deeper look and view the very laws of the phys- 
ical world as of the nature of habit. If nature has 
evolved atoms and molecules out of primal ether, then 
chemical affinity and other forms of energy may be re- 



THE NATURE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY 177 

garded as habitual modes of action that nature has ac- 
quired. The whole cosmos is thus seen to be ingrained 
with habit, and this is another character that shows its 
mental nature, 

(5) Freedom and purpose are still more character- 
istic marks of the soul that we found exhibited in nature, 
and we need not go over this ground again. Purpose is 
written broadly and brightly over nature, and freedom 
is involved in all the marks of mind found in nature. 
That freedom is not strangled by law and habit is proven in 
our own experience. Law and habit are not incompatible 
with freedom, but are the very means that reason would 
choose and has chosen, and so they are the grooves in 
which reason moves, the track along which freedom flies 
and finds its liberty. 

Thus the same general characters that mark the soul 
also mark the world and add their weight to the conclu- 
sion that the phenomenal world is a manifestation of mind. 

8. Man the Key of the Universe 

We saw in Chapter VII that the soul is reality itself, 
consisting of the self in its threefold nature of thought, 
sensibility, and will, and characterized by unity, growth, 
law, habit, freedom, and purpose. In this chapter we 
have examined the fabric of the phenomenal world and 
have found it matching the soul in all these points, 
woven of the same threads, and exhibiting the same 
pattern, and thus showing its ontological cause to be of 
the same piece with the ontological soul of man. The 



178 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

process by which this result is reached consists in start- 
ing with our own soul as this is expressed in our phe- 
nomenal bodily activities, tracing the same phenomenal 
activities through nature, and drawing the conclusion that 
as these activities manifest mind in our own body, they 
also manifest mind in nature. Man thus becomes the 
key of the universe. As he consists of an ontological 
soul manifesting itself in a phenomenal body, so the onto- 
logical world consists of a vaster soul manifesting itself 
in the phenomenal world. Man is a bit of reality that is 
representative of all reality, and the universal and ultimate 
reality of the world is thus seen to be soul or spirit. 
The soul of a man is a little world, and the world is a 
great Soul. 



CHAPTER IX 
THE WORLD AND GOD 

We are now prepared to announce the grand conclu- 
sion of idealism : the world is the phenomenon of God. 
This conclusion may be unfolded under several heads. 

I. God revealed in the World 

(i) A phenomenon, as we have seen, is the impres- 
sion made upon our minds by an objective reality. An 
orange is the phenomenon of an objective reality which 
affects our consciousness so that we experience the sen- 
sations of yellow color, pungent odor, acid taste, and 
hardness to the touch, grouped in spatial form. The 
phenomenal object is a complex state of our conscious- 
ness ; and the corresponding objective reality is not an ex- 
tended, colored, pungent, acid and hard lump of matter, 
but, as our whole argument has shown, is itself mental 
in nature and can only be a corresponding mental state 
in another mind. What is thus true of the orange is 
also true of the whole material universe. As a phe- 
nomenon it exists wholly in our own consciousness and 
is a mental state, a complex set of sensations of light, 
heat, color, odor, taste, and touch, projected in spatial 
forms and occurring in an orderly succession and form- 
ing a system. 

179 



l8o THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

It may be thought absurd that the whole mighty cos- 
mos can thus be crowded into our tiny consciousness, 
but the difficulty disappears under reflection. Con- 
sciousness is not to be compared with the cosmos in 
size, for bulk is a spatial form and does not apply to 
the reality of either consciousness or the cosmos. The 
human mind, however limited it may be in power, is yet 
capable of grasping great ideas, and so it may hold the 
cosmos in its consciousness. Further, our consciousness 
at any time grasps the cosmos at only a few points, giv- 
ing us a mere outline or sketch of the system. This 
outline we then proceed to fill out as our experience 
grows, or we fill it out in theory. Our universe is thus 
largely a theoretical construction, and only a few points 
of it exist as sensations in our minds. And finally it is 
evident that as a matter of fact the cosmos as we know 
it does exist in our consciousness. We know it only as 
a set and system of sensations, and these are nothing 
but states of our own consciousness. 

The world is thus a phenomenon in our minds, but it 
is a phenomenon or appearance of something : what is 
this something ? We have already seen, through the 
argument of Chapter VIII, that this ontological reality 
which is the cause of the phenomenal world, is mind, 
soul, spirit. The unity of the phenomenal world, as 
we have seen, carries with it the unity of the ontological 
cause, or leads to one Spirit as the agent back of the 
grand appearance of this world. This Spirit we call 
God. The world, then, is the phenomenal result of the 



THE WORLD AND GOD l8l 

immediate impact, influence, or causal activity of God 
on our souls. God reveals himself to us as the world, 
and the world is our experience of God. 

(2) Can we now penetrate through the world to the 
nature of God ? The first fundamental fact we know 
about God from the world is that he is consciousness. 
Our whole examination of the fabric of the world 
showed its kinship with our minds, and therefore its 
spiritual nature. God and man are one kind of reality. 

Can we now go beyond this general fact and reach 
the structural nature of God .'' Here we must proceed 
with becoming caution and modesty. We cannot hope 
by searching to find out God, and yet we may hope to 
get some glimpses of his nature. We must here start 
with the groundwork of our own soul, which is our 
primary and fundamental bit of reality. This bit of 
reality, we have a right to assume until the assumption 
is proved or disproved, is representative of all reality. 
This is the minute base line from which we project and 
construct the infinite nature of God, as the astronomer 
uses the diminutive orbit of the earth to compute the 
parallax and enormous distance of the stars ; or as the 
physicist from the composition of the tiny flame in his 
laboratory determines the composition of the sun and 
stars, so from the nature of our own soul we deduce the 
nature of God. God is mirrored in man as the great 
globe of the sun is mirrored in the dewdrop. 

The fundamental nature of the human soul is a three- 
fold structure of self-conscious thought, sensibility, and 



l82 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

free will, fused into personality ; or personality is the 
selfhood of the soul unfolded into self-conscious thought, 
sensibility, and free will. Magnifying this structural 
groundwork of the soul gives us our initial conception 
or working theory of the nature of God, which concep- 
tion is to be further tested, modified, and elaborated as 
we proceed. God is self-conscious thought, sensibility, 
and free will, fused into or forming a person. 

This conception receives strong confirmation from 
our examination of the nature of the phenomenal world, 
which, as we have seen, matches this groundwork at 
every point. The world as a manifestation of thought, 
sensibility, and will, cohering into unity, is a revelation 
of the nature of God, which shines through this phe- 
nomenal veil or curtain. The pattern wrought in the 
veil, or film of our consciousness, is but the face of God 
impressing himself line by line and point by point upon 
us. In experiencing the phenomenal world we are thus 
gazing upon the immediate manifestation of God ; we 
are directly experiencing his thought and sensibility 
and will; we are beholding him face to face. The image 
we thus see of God impressed upon our consciousness 
is an image of personality, or union of thought, sensi-" 
bility, and will, and thus the process by which we project/ 
and magnify the groundwork of our own personal na- 
ture into the nature of God, is confirmed. God is a per- 
sonal Spirit who thinks and feels and wills. All the 
thought and feeling and will we trace in the fabric of 
the world are the expression of his personality. Man 



THE WORLD AND GOD 1 83 

is the image of God and reflects his nature, as the dew- 
drops reflects the sun. 

Take all in the word : the truth in God's breast 
Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed : 
Though he is so bright and we so dim, 
We are made in his image to witness him. 

It may be objected that this is crass anthropomor- 
phism, or viewing God simply as a magnified man. But 
if we trust our reasoning hitherto, we shall not fear either 
the name or the fact of anthropomorphism, for we have 
seen that man is a bit of representative reality and the key 
of the universe, and as such he unlocks for us, not only 
the heavens, but the very nature of God himself. Of 
course we are not to attribute to God a gross, extended, 
material body, for man himself has no such body exter- 
nal to his soul. God is spirit, and no other kind of reality 
exists either in him or out of him. 

We are not to suppose, however, that God is no more than 
a magnified man or vastly enlarged human soul. The 
soul is subject to growth and is found in very different 
stages of development and degrees of mental power. 
There is an enormous difference between the soul of an 
infant and that of a mature man, or between that of a 
savage and that of a philosopher. Still greater differences 
separate the mind of man from such soul-life as we see 
manifested in animals. The mind of even the highest 
animal falls almost infinitely below the mind of man. 
While it exhibits degrees of intelligence, sensibility, and 
will, yet these are in such a rudimentary stage that they 



l84 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

do not rise into self-conscious thought and free will, and 
so do not reach personality. Animals are at best only 
partial selves, and so belong to a lower order of beings 
than man. But now as there are orders of being far 
below man, may there not also be orders far above him ? 
May there not be faculties of mind higher and more 
powerful than any we know, and may not these be 
organized into personality that lies infinitely above the 
level of our personality? It is not at all likely that the 
human soul is the topmost and ultimate blossom on the 
mystic Tree of Life ; rather we may think of it as a 
bud or germ which points to a perfect Mind or Spirit in 
which all human limitations and imperfections are tran- 
scended so that intelligence is omniscience and will is 
omnipotence. The vastness and complexity and mystery 
of the universe point to a Mind which is inconceivably 
if not infinitely greater than our own. The divine Mind, 
or God, then, rises above the human mind into person- 
ality which is inconceivably higher and more powerful 
in its faculties and organization. Such a Mind transcends 
our mind as ours transcends that of an animal or vege- 
table. 

We cannot conceive such a mind, because it lies above 
the level of our experience, and it would be a very filmy 
speculation by which we would attempt to penetrate into 
its nature. It cannot be anything lower than our con- 
sciousness, and must lie above it, and we naturally attempt 
to gain some hint of it by removing the limitations and 
imperfections from the human mind and projecting it 



THE WORLD AND GOD 185 

toward the infinite and absolute. Does God think as we 
think, feel as we feel, and will as we will? We must be- 
lieve that God thinks and feels and wills, but not after 
our finite fashion. His thinking is to be conceived as 
being free from all human limitations. This means that 
the barriers of ignorance are to be removed from 
the divine Mind, and its knowledge is omniscient. It 
also means freedom from a still deeper human limitation, 
that of mediate thinking. The divine Mind does not use 
the instrumental processes of sense perception and 
reasoning by which we gather facts and build up knowl- 
edge, but has immediate intuition of all facts and all 
meaning. 

Does the divine Mind think in the intuitions or men- 
tal forms of space and time as we do .'' God projects his 
thoughts upon the field of our consciousness in these 
forms, but are the forms purely subjective to our minds, 
or are they also forms of his Mind .'' It would be rash to 
give a dogmatic answer to this question, and here even 
speculation grows thin to the vanishing point. We 
cannot afhrm that God thinks in terms of space or pro- 
jects his thoughts in spatial forms, and it may be that 
this form lies wholly within the field of our human con- 
sciousness. But, on the other hand, as our minds are 
the offspring of his, and in some degree copies of his, it 
may be that the spatial form we experience is the shadow 
of a similar form in his experience, or, at least, is a 
symbol of a corresponding though higher form in the di- 
vine Mind. As to the temporal form, we have already 



l86 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

seen, in Chapter VI, that this differs from the spatial 
form in that it inheres in the reality of the soul itself, its 
experiences being successive, but not spatial. We have 
also seen that the temporal experience of the soul depends 
on the length of the time-span. Removing the limit 
from the time-span would result in a consciousness in 
which all things are logically successive and yet eter- 
nally present. Such a temporal consciousness, we may 
suppose, is a hint of that of the divine Mind. God is 
conscious of time, but not in time. He does not exist in 
temporal succession, but all temporal succession exists in 
him. The poet Henry Vaughn had some such dream 
of eternity and time in his strangely beautiful lines : — 

I saw Eternity the other night, 

, Like a great ring of pure and endless light, 

All calm, as it was bright ; 
And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years, 

Driven by the splieres 
Like a vast shadow mov'd ; in which the world 

And all her train were huri'd. 

As to feeling, we must remove from our thought of 
God's emotional life all the imperfections of our emo- 
tional experience. Anything in the nature of evil pas- 
sion in him is abhorrent to our thought ; and we must 
also remove all fitfulness and fickleness, uncontrolled 
gusts and outbreaks of feeling, irritability and fretful- 
ness, ill-balanced and extreme or deficient emotions, 
personal bias and selfishness. There must be vast 
masses and profound depths of emotion in the life of 
God, pure and calm, deep and strong, rich and jubilant, 



THE WORLD AND GOD 1 87 

compared with which the deepest and most glorious 
emotional experiences of humanity are only as single 
gleams of light compared with the total splendor of the 
sun. Not only so, the emotional life of God not only 
rises to higher levels and fathoms deeper depths, but it 
also may differ in faculty and organization from that of 
the human soul. ..-.., 

The will of God must differ deeply from the human 
will. The human will is obstructed by barriers without 
and within, and must use means to effect its ends. But 
as the divine Mind has immediate knowledge of all 
things and is freed from the use of sense perception 
and logical processes, so the divine will must achieve 
its ends without the use of intermediate means, God is 
not hampered as we are by limited power, but all power 
is his, and with him thought and action, the will to do and 
the deed itself, are one. " God said. Let there be light : 
and there was light." With him, to speak is to do, to 
think is to create. Thought and action are fused into 
one stream, and instantly flow into deed. 

It may be thought that a consciousness possessed of 
such powers of omniscient intelligence and omnipotent 
will cannot be called consciousness at all, and that, in 
particular, it cannot be supposed to have personality. 
Does it not differ so widely both in degree and in nature 
as to be something other than consciousness and per- 
sonality as we know reality .'* This difficulty, especially 
as regards personality, will come up a httle later, but for 
the present we may say that we are not without some 



l88 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

gleams of light. We know that consciousness exists in 
different degrees and that these differences maybe enor- 
mous. We are able to widen out the barriers of igno- 
rance that bound our knowledge, and we can imagine 
this process carried out indefinitely. Genius grasps by 
intuition many things that ordinary minds must reach 
through slow discursive processes. The gap between 
will and deed is also often shortened up in our human 
experience. A musical genius thinks and wills a musi- 
cal idea and composition by one stroke of mind, and 
poetic thought and poetic expression may coincide in 
the poet's mind. We can imagiiie all these processes 
carried indefinitely towards the point where human 
limitations would disappear, and these forms of genius 
are hints and germs of unlimited consciousness. So 
while the divine consciousness rises above all our 
limitations and imperfections, yet it does not lose its 
fundamental character as consciousness. 

(3) We have already drifted into the question 
whether the world reveals God as the First Cause and 
as the Infinite and Absolute. An old objection to the 
arguments drawn from the creation for the existence of 
God is that a finite creation cannot demonstrate an in- 
finite Creator, but only one sufificient to produce the 
finite effect. This contention must be admitted as re- 
gards the cosmological and teleological arguments. 
Only a finite cause is necessary to account for the uni- 
verse viewed as a manufactured product bearing marks 
of design, though such a cause would be inconceivably 



THE WORLD, AND GOD 189 

vast. Yet we do not reach any real explanation of the 
world as long as we simply trace it back to a finite 
cause, for such a cause must itself be accounted for, and 
thus we are driven back along a line of endless regres- 
sion. The only relief from this regress is belief in a 
First Cause or uncaused Cause that stands as the origin 
and explanation of all beginnings and evolutions. The 
universe is a vast complex of dependence in which 
every part depends on every other part, and its state at 
one moment depends on its state the preceding moment, 
and so on endlessly backward. Such a universe de- 
mands an independent and absolute Cause as its logical 
counterpart and explanation. Without such a First 
Cause the whole structure of our experience and think- 
ing would be left baseless and unexplained ; and thus 
the whole value of our constructive thought is pledged 
to such a Cause, and we are justified in believing in it as 
confidently as we believe in any conclusion of our rea- 
soning. It is true that such a Cause is a mystery, but 
we must rest in mystery somewhere and cannot explain 
our ultimate explanation. The First Cause is the one 
great and final mystery that gathers into itself and ex- 
plains all other mysteries, and back of this mystery we 
cannot ask to go. We understand all things as mani- 
festations of a Cause which we cannot understand. 

Finite dependence thus leads to the Absolute, or the 
Cause that is loosed from all dependence or relations, as 
the word means. In a similar way, the finite leads to 
the idea of, and to necessary belief in, the Infinite, which 



190 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

is the Cause that has no bounds to its reality, but includes 
all possibilities of being. By a logical necessity of 
thought we reach or intuitively possess the idea of, and 
belief in, the First Cause, the Absolute, and the Infinite ; 
and the arguments from the nature of the world show 
us that this First Cause is endowed with self-conscious 
thought, sensibility, and free will, and is a personal Spirit, 
or God. 

(4) We are now again confronted with the difficulty 
that is alleged against the Absolute and Infinite as being 
inconsistent with personality. Personality, it is said, im- 
plies limitation. It is conditioned on the necessary 
relation of the self to the not-self, and, more definitely, 
of subject to object. There can be no personality with- 
out self-conscious thought, and there can be no thought 
without a subject that thinks and an object that is thought 
about. Thus personality is limited in its very constitu- 
tion by the not-self that must stand over against the self, 
and by the object that must stand over against the sub- 
ject. But the Absolute, it is said, by its very definition 
cannot permit a not-self, which would reduce it to sub- 
jection to relation, and the Infinite cannot admit an ob- 
ject, which would limit it as subject. This difficulty is 
more verbal than real ; it grows out of our definitions 
rather than out of our experience. The Absolute is 
not necessarily that which is released from all re- 
lations, but that which is released from all necessary 
relations or dependence imposed upon it from without. 
It may itself initiate any relations it chooses, and still be 



THE WORLD AND GOD I9I 

absolute, for such relations are not imposed upon it so 
as to destroy its absoluteness, but it constitutes them 
and so remains absolute over them. If the Absolute 
were denied or lacked the power of constituting relations, 
such inability would itself limit and thereby destroy the 
absoluteness of the Absolute. In a similar way, the 
Infinite is not that which has no limitations, but that 
which has no necessary limitations imposed upon it from 
without. It still has the power of setting up limitations 
to its own action, but such limitations are still within its 
power and are not real limitations to infinitude. The 
lack of such power would be a real limitation to the 
Infinite. 

Personality is not a limitation, but an added power. 
The opposition of self and not-self is not a necessary 
relation. This relation is generally present in our human 
experience. Our consciousness of self, though it begins 
with, yet does not depend on, our consciousness of a 
not-self, but is an immediate experience ; and we can 
conceive all other beings blotted out of existence and 
our solitary self remaining. The opposition of subject 
and object is a necessary relation of personality, at least 
in our experience of personality, but this relation may 
be internal to the constitution of personality itself. 
The self is at once subject and object, and thus experiences 
this relation in itself. The infinite personality of God 
may be based on this relation and yet not pass into de- 
pendence on any external object. 

Personality is the power to know and feel and act, 



192 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

and this ability is not a limitation, but an enormous ex- 
pansion of power. The absence of such power would 
be a limitation and loss beyond any other conceivable 
loss. In the human soul personality is fettered by the 
limitations and imperfections of its finite conditions, and 
the struggle of the soul in its development and education 
and passionate ambitions is to break through or widen 
out these limitations. We can conceive of freedom and 
power of personality higher than any we have attained, 
and we long to climb this height and reach this freedom, 
and at times we beat against the bars of our limitations 
as birds against the wires of their cage. Now these 
limitations do not exist in the personality of God. He 
has personality in full infinite perfection and freedom 
and power. What exists in us only as a tiny seed or 
feeble germ of personality, exists in him in the glorious 
flower and perfect fruit. We are but pale shadows of 
his substance, faint gleams of his glory. 

This is the reasoning of Lotze in his great chapter on 
" The Personality of God " in his " Microcosmus." 
" Perfect Personality," he says, " is in God only, to all 
finite minds there is allotted but a pale copy thereof ; the 
finiteness of the finite is not a producing condition of this 
Personality, but a limit and a hindrance to its develop- 
ment." To the same conclusion comes Professor Borden 
P. Bowne in his " Theism." " On all these accounts," 
he concludes, "we regard the objections to the person- 
ality of the world-ground as resting on a very superficial 
psychology. So far as they are not verbal, they arise 



THE WORLD AND GOD 1 93 

from taking the limitations of human consciousness as 
essential to consciousness in general. In fact, we must 
reverse the common speculative dogma on this point, 
and declare that proper personality is possible only to 
the Absolute. The very objections urged against the 
personality of the Absolute show the incompleteness of 
human personality. Thus it is said, truly enough, that 
we are conditioned by something not ourselves. The 
outer world is an important factor in our mental life. 
It controls us far more than we do it. But this is a 
limitation of our personality rather than its source. Our 
personality would be heightened rather than diminished, 
if we were self-determinant in this respect. Again, in 
our inner life we find similar limitations. We cannot 
always control our ideas. They often seem to be occur- 
rences in us rather than our own doing. The past vanishes 
beyond recall ; and often in the present we are more 
passive than active. But these, also, are limitations of 
our personality. We should be much more truly per- 
sons if we were absolutely determinant of all our states. 
But we have seen that all finite things have the ground 
of their existence, not in themselves, but in the Infinite, 
and they owe their peculiar nature to their mutual rela- 
tions and to the plan of the whole. Hence, in the finite 
consciousness, there will always be a foreign element, 
an external compulsion, a passivity as well as activity, a 
dependence on something not ourselves, and a corre- 
sponding subjection. Hence in us personality will always 
be incomplete. The absolute knowledge and self-pos- 



194 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

session which are necessary to perfect personality can 
be found only in the absolute and infinite being upon 
whom all things depend. In his pure self-determination 
and perfect self-possession only do we find the conditions 
of complete personality ; and of this our finite personality 
can never be more than the feeblest and faintest image." 

This reasoning turns the very objections that are 
urged against the personality of the Absolute into argu- 
ments for such personality, and uses them as means for 
raising the personality of the Absolute to infinite perfec- 
tion. We may call such personality " suprapersonal," 
with Paulsen, or " hyperpersonal," with Spencer, and it 
will still retain its fundamental character; and it obvi- 
ously points to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, 
which, as compared with human personality, is a higher 
and more complex and infinitely perfect constitution of 
the Godhead. We even may find a faint copy of such 
a complex constitution in the human soul, for its three- 
fold powers of thought, sensibility, and will correspond 
in a measure with the three persons of the Godhead — 
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The tripartite nature 
that is outlined in us may exist in the Godhead in such 
a complex constitution or society of persons as is sym- 
bolized in the doctrine of the Trinity. 

(5) Can we now, on the basis of the revelation of the 
phenomenal world, make any afifirmation as to the moral 
character of God ? We have seen that the phenome- 
nal world contains ethical elements of benevolence and 
righteousness. These ethical elements must have their 



THE WORLD AND GOD 195 

roots in God, and so far are the outflowering of his moral 
character. All the goodness and joy that suffuse and 
at times run riot through nature, flow out of his nature, 
and the motherhood and all the altruistic affection and 
sacrifice seen in nature are precious drops or rich streams 
of love out of his heart. The righteousness that is 
manifested in the order of the world, its truth and hon- 
esty, its reward for virtue and retribution for vice, are 
exhibitions of his moral nature. These reflections of 
the divine character in nature are necessarily faint, for 
the ethical elements of life in the phenomenal world 
sink to a low tide and grow dim. But ethical life rises 
to a high tide and grows resplendent in man ; and man 
as a constituent of the world is a. fuller manifestation of 
God, especially of his moral character, than the dim 
deeps of nature. The conscience which is the crown of 
man points to a similar though infinitely higher moral 
nature as the crown of God. All the moral glory of our 
life is but a faint gleam of the splendor of his perfection. 
In him the ethical nature, freed from all finite limitation 
and stain of sin, rises to its full infinite perfection and 
glory. God is infinite, not only in intelligence and feel- 
ing and power, but also in truth and righteousness, good- 
ness and love. 

But if the goodness in the world and in man is rooted 
in God and manifests his moral character, does not the 
evil in the world and in man spring from the same source 
and cast grave shadows on the divine character .'' This 
problem will come up for discussion in the next chapter. 



196 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

2. God as the Cause of the World 

The world, as we have seen, bears the marks of being 
a product or manufactured article. It is evident to our 
immediate inspection that it is not a First Cause, but a 
late link in a chain of causation which must run back to 
a real First Cause on which it hangs. This First Cause, 
as we have seen, is God, who is posited or assumed as 
the beginning and primal mystery of all finite things. 

(r) The world is produced by God's agency. We 
must guard ourselves at this point against supposing 
that the world has been created and thrown out into in- 
dependence of, or separateness from, God. Our habit of 
thought conceives the world as a reality out in space, 
external to and separate from God and from our spirits, 
as though it were a great mass or lump of matter be- 
tween God and us. This view of the world has gone to 
pieces under examination, and we now see that the world 
is not something external to God and thrust between 
him and us, but is God's own thought and feeling and 
deed, a vastly complex state of his infinite consciousness. 
It is therefore internal or subjective to God, and becomes 
subjective to us by reproduction in our minds. God's 
causation of the world, therefore, consists in his thinking, 
feeling, and willing the world : thinking it as an intellec- 
tual construction, feeling it as a vast and rich emotion, 
and wiUing it as a mighty deed. 

(2) Such causal agency is to be conceived by us as 
reflected or symbolized in our own causal activity. We 



THE WORLD AND GOD I97 

have seen in Chapter VI how the mind frames objects 
of thought, meaning, and will by its own creative agency. 
We are constantly engaged in such causal production, 
constructing our ideas and plans, and such activity is 
universal in the experience of men. But we can see it 
most vividly illustrated in the case of minds of supreme 
genius. The great poet, painter, or musician calls into 
existence a beautiful intellectual conception or a master- 
piece of painting or of music by an act of his total soul 
whereby he almost at one stroke thinks and feels and 
wills his poem or picture or symphony. This creation 
at first exists wholly in his consciousness, and is a purely 
spiritual product. Afterwards the creator may fix it in 
some material form ; that is, he may cast it in the mold 
of the world, which is a manifestation of God's thought. 
By this means he may be said to stamp his thought upon 
the divine thought as a more stable medium and means 
of expression and of sharing it with others and of per- 
petuating it. But at its first creation it exists wholly in 
his mind as a purely mental reality. As long as it is 
kept subjective, it is made stable as a permanent object 
only by being rethought, ref elt, and rewilled. The mind 
continually reproduces it, or it lies dormant in the mem- 
ory, and the object may thus remain fixed in the mind 
for years and never be cast in any material form. 

Applying this principle to the divine Mind, we may 
conceive of God as thinking, feeling, and willing the 
world by a total act of his consciousness and holding it 
in a state of stability by constant repetition. Looked 



198 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

at in one swift glance, the world seems to stand static 
and fixed. A second glance shows many of its parts in 
action, but many other parts still seem motionless. Yet 
we know that everything is in a state of constant flow. 
The river, which at the first glance looks like a fixed and 
identical body of water, is ever flowing by and is com- 
posed of different water every hour. The sunbeam, 
which as it lies across a dark room looks like a solid 
bar of gold, is a stream or series of inconceivably rapid 
vibrations and is a new sunbeam every infinitesimal frac- 
tion of a second. We speak of " the everlasting hills," 
yet the hills and mountains and all the physical features 
of the globe are in state of flux. A block of granite or 
bar of iron, which seems stable as though it were a 
changeless substance, is yet as surely a stream or series 
of changes as is the river or the sunbeam. Its atoms or 
electrons are the ether in motion, or are whirls of pure 
energy, and the stability of the granite or iron consists 
in the constant repetition of these vibrations. The 
stability of the world, then, consists in the fact of its 
being constantly thought and felt and willed in the 
divine Mind. The resolution of the world into ether 
whirls in constant activity brings us close to the fact 
that God is constantly willing the world, for the ether 
appears to be nothing else than the will of God. A 
permanent object, then, such as a star or a stone, is 
stable because God is constantly repeating the thought 
and f eeHng and volition that constitute it ; and the whole 
world derives its stability in the same way. 



THE WORLD AND GOD 199 

(3) This conception throws Hght upon the nature of 
causation. It is a mental act of the same nature as our 
will. Our only means of understanding it is through our 
experience of our own causal activity in the exercise of 
our will, and we cannot attach any other meaning to the 
word "cause." It follows that there is no causation in the 
phenomenal world in itself, but that phenomena only re- 
flect or symbolize the causation that is operating in the 
ontological world in God's mind or in other minds. It 
seems one of the most certain things of our senses that 
when a hammer falls on a stone, it is the hammer that breaks 
the stone, or that it is the sun that warms the earth, and 
the seed that produces the tree. Yet our course of rea- 
soning has shown that these objects in the phenomenal 
world are states in the mind of God, and that it is his 
mind that is producing these objects in the order 
of their relations and changes, and not the things 
that are producing the changes in one another. As 
a musician plays on an instrument the notes do not 
produce one another ; the first note or chord does not 
produce the second, and so on ; but all the notes issue 
from the instrument as their common cause, and the 
real cause of the music is the musician, who sends it out 
of his soul. The parts and colors of a picture do not 
produce one another, but they all spring from the 
painter's hand. The words of a poem do not create one 
another, but all are shed from the poet's pen. Our 
thoughts do not cause one another, but they all issue 
from the mind as their common cause. Now the things 



200 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

of the world are the symbols of God's thoughts, and as 
such they do not cause one another, but all are caused 
in their mutual relations by the one mind of God. Cau- 
sation is thus a purely mental act, and is never a force 
operating in the phenomenal world, but is always a 
mind or will acting in the ontological world. 

(4) With this conception of causation in mind, we 
may now look more closely into the relation of God to the 
world. All the changes in the phenomenal world sym- 
bolize corresponding relations in the divine conscious- 
ness. The fact that all phenomenal changes are inter- 
related so that a change at one point involves an adjusting 
change throughout the whole system of the world, 
the displacement of one atom displacing all the stars, 
means that God's thoughts are logically related and inter- 
linked in a system so that a change in one thought pre- 
cipitates or carries with it an adjustment of his whole 
consciousness. This conception is the symbol under 
which we must conceive the unity of the divine conscious- 
ness, though we must not forget it is a symbol and not 
suppose it literally represents the transcendent conscious- 
ness of God. 

The phenomenal world exhibits the processes of 
growth or evolution in its parts and in its totality. This 
fact points to corresponding processes in the divine 
Mind. The consciousness of God is not held in eternal 
static fixity and finality, like a vast ocean frozen solid, but 
within its eternal time-span it experiences all the temporal 
activities and evolutions of the world. His thoughts are 



THE WORLD AND GOD 20I 

developed into their logical relations and pass from ideal 
to realization and from germ to fruit. The conscious 
ness of God is thus being differentiated into all the in- 
finite variety and richness of thought, feeling, and deed 
that are symbolized in the phenomenal world. 

The laws of the phenomenal world reflect modes or 
habits of the divine consciousness. The question whether 
these laws are rooted in the divine nature and are its neces- 
sary and eternal expression, or are only determinations 
of the divine wisdom and will, is one that must elude us, 
at least in many points. Some of the laws of the 
phenomenal world, such as mathematical relations, are 
also laws of the ontological world as we know this world 
in our own minds ; and such laws, we may suppose, are 
essentially inherent in the divine nature and could not 
be altered by the divine will. In a similar way the 
moral laws of truth and righteousness lie below the 
divine will and are embedded in the divine nature. But 
as to the physical and vital laws of the phenomenal 
world, we cannot make this affirmation. We cannot 
assert that of necessity gravitation must universally act 
directly as the mass and inversely as the square of the 
distance, or that the laws of chemical affinity, light and 
heat, and of biological growth must be as they are. 
These may be expressions of the necessary nature of 
God, in which case the world could not have been built 
on any other lines or laws than its present structure 
shows, though these laws might have been combined 
into different patterns. On the other hand, we are in- 



202 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

clined to think that these laws are determinations of the 
divine wisdom, in which case they might have been 
determined differently and the w^orld might have been 
built on lines of gravitation, chemical affinity, light and 
electricity, life and growth, very different from those we 
know, resulting in a wholly different world or worlds. 
There may be such worlds now, and the totality of God's 
thoughts and deeds may infinitely exceed not only our 
experience, but all our possible conceptions. 

From this point of view the present laws of our 
world are of the nature of habits rather than of finali- 
ties necessarily grounded in the eternal nature of God. 
Now habits are subject to change and readjustment. 
The same wisdom and will that shaped them to its ends 
can reshape them to new ends. The divine nature is 
eternally fixed, but the divine habits, however changeless 
they may seem to our short vision, are yet plastic to the 
divine wisdom and will. Gravitation and all the physical 
laws of nature may never vary so far as we can test 
them, but God may vary them at his pleasure on suffi- 
cient occasion or ground. The laws of God's nature 
are eternal and are not subject to his will, yet these 
laws do not fetter the freedom of his will, for they are 
just the way his will wants to act. But the laws 
determined by God's will and wisdom are flexible, and 
instantly adapt themselves to his purposes. 

The phenomenal world, then, is not an eternal prison 
house of God, but is the expression of his freedom and 
ever fits his purposes, as the skin fits the human body. 



THE WORLD AND GOD 203 

If God has occasion to work what would be a miracle in 
our eyes, he can do so without violating any essential 
law of his nature, either by combining the laws known 
to us in a new way that would be miraculous to us, or 
by using some law as yet hidden from us, or by modify- 
ing for the occasion one of the laws of his will or one of 
his habits. Whether he ever does change a law of his 
will or modify a habit, is a question of evidence ; but the 
divine power to do so cannot be denied by science, and 
is affirmed by philosophy. 

(5) In the light of these speculations, in what sense 
or degree does the world become objective to the mind 
of God .'' As a construct of his own mind, it is an object 
to his consciousness. The relation of subject and 
object is known to us in our own mind. We construct 
a thought as an intellectual concept, suffuse it with 
emotion, and cast it into the form of a determination ; 
and all this may take place wholly within the field of 
consciousness. Such an object, as a mathematical prop- 
osition, a poem, musical melody, or a life-plan, may 
persist in the mind for months or years. Though it 
is not always in the focus of consciousness, yet it is 
present in the mind as a part of its mental furniture. 
The same principle, set free from human limitations, 
gives us a faint conception of such objects in the divine 
Mind. God has the power of framing his ideas into a 
construct or object of thought, filling this object with 
emotion and casting it into a deed, and holding it 
steadily in his consciousness ; and thus this point 



204 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

in his consciousness becomes an object to his selfhood 
acting as subject. Does such an object ever in any 
degree become separate from God ? It could do so 
only by becoming a personal being, which by its nature 
would attain a degree of independence and isolation. 
The mark of personality is inner life of its own, selfhood 
unfolding into thought, sensibihty, and will. In the 
higher animals we see the phenomenal symbols of some 
degree of such inner life, though it does not reach full 
selfhood. Hence Lotze makes the suggestion that 
animals are partial selves, centers in the consciousness 
of God that have developed towards and attained some 
germ of personality, though still falling short of it and 
therefore still included within the consciousness of God, 
but on its margin, so to speak, or near the point of 
separation. In the case of lower animals, vegetables, 
and inorganic matter our reasoning would lead us to 
think of them as being less and less developed as 
centers of life and as being more and more deeply em- 
bedded in the universal life of God. But they still 
have such individuality in the consciousness of God 
that they are objects of his thought. 

At this point we are prepared to give an idealistic defi- 
nition of matter. Matter is a mode of the divine activity, 
existing only in and for intelligence ; primarily in the 
infinite Intelhgence, and secondarily in finite intelli- 
gences. 

This view of the divine Mind raises the question whether 
there are in it degrees of consciousness, such as we ex- 



THE WORLD AND GOD 205 

perience in ourselves when from a full vivid tide our con- 
sciousness sinks into the dimness of sleep or into the 
lower depths of relatively unconscious or subliminal mind. 
We have seen that the world exhibits lower and lower 
degrees of thought and sensibility and will as we descend 
its scale from our own bodily activities into the move- 
ments of inorganic matter, which symbolize dim deeps of 
mind. Are these deeps only relative to finite creations, 
or do they reflect or symbolize a vast abyss of low con- 
sciousness in the divine nature .'' We cannot admit this 
latter alternative. These obscure deeps are germs of 
inner life which are the beginnings of the evolution that 
culminates in man. But there are no such dark depths 
in the divine nature, and it is pure consciousness at full 
tide throughout its whole being. " God is light, and in 
him is no darkness at all." 

3. God and Man 

What is the relation subsisting between God and 
man.? 

(i) God creates the soul of man and all finite spirits. 
This follows from the finite dependent nature of the 
human soul. It bears the marks of a derived origin as 
certainly as the phenomenal world itself. This relation 
is an ultimate fact which we must accept without further 
explanation. Yet the process of this origin is not alto- 
gether hidden from us. The human soul comes from 
God as his creation or offspring, but this origin does not 
exclude intermediate steps. The soul comes into being 



2o6 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

in the phenomenal world through a process of evolution. 
There is a stage of gestation buried deep in the phenom- 
enal body, and out of that mysterious depth the human 
soul emerges as a germ which begins to unfold into self- 
hood and conscious life. What is the nature of this 
phenomenal process when it is interpreted in terms 
of the ontological world ? We" have seen that things 
are centers of consciousness in the universal mind of 
God around which his thought and feeling and will are 
organized, and that these centers develop towards self- 
hood, which is the limit or point where they are endowed 
with an inner life of their own and become psychologi- 
cally detached from the divine Mind. Animals are partial 
selves, beings in the consciousness of God that are on its 
margin, so to speak, and near the point of detachment. 
On this view human souls have reached the point of sep- 
aration from the divine Mind and have passed into per- 
sonality. God has breathed into them his full breath and 
blown them into full-orbed selves, having a subjective 
life of their own. The process of development in the 
phenomenal world symbolizes this process of develop- 
ment in, and detachment from, the divine Mind by which 
the human soul reaches selfhood. 

Yet we are not to suppose that human souls ever be- 
come ontologically separate from God. Such separa- 
tion would break the unity of being and drive a cleft into 
the universe. God must ever remain the all-inclusive 
being, and all his creations are still retained within his 
infinitude. This relation of God and finite spirits is one 



THE WORLD AND GOD 207 

of reciprocal immanence. God is in all souls, and all 
souls are in God. Yet this mutual immanence does not 
merge or blur the borders of personality either in God 
or in human souls. 

Such a relation may be illustrated from the nature of 
infinite mathematical series. The series i, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 
7, 8, 9, 10, . . . is an infinite series. By taking every 
second term of this series we get the series i, 3, 5, 7, 
9, . . . . Every third term gives the series i, 4, 7, 10, ... . 
An infinite number of such subordinate series can be con- 
structed, all of which are contained within the original 
series and all of which are also infinite. The original 
series may be called, in Spinoza's term, " infinitely in- 
finite," and the derived series may be called subordi- 
nately infinite. If we hold all these series as purely 
mental constructions in our minds, and, in fact, they 
are such constructions, then we have one infinitely in- 
finite spiritual entity including within it an infinite num- 
ber of subordinate infinite entities. The original series 
gives birth to, or creates, the subordinate series and 
determines their nature and laws at every point; and 
the subordinate series are derived from, and dependent 
upon, the original series throughout, so that in it they 
literally move and have their being. The two sets of 
series, the original infinitely infinite and the derived sub- 
ordinately infinites, interpenetrate each other throughout 
their whole being, or are reciprocally immanent. 

If we now transfer this mathematical relation to God 
and human spirits, we find it parallels their relations in a 



2o8 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

remarkable way. God is the infinitely infinite series, 
without beginning or end and containing all possible 
terms and relations, powers and activities. Human spirits 
are the derived subordinately infinite series ; for the 
human soul, being in the likeness of God, has infinite 
powers, paralleling those of God, or powers of infinite 
range and permanence. Yet the human spirit is also 
finite in that it touches God at comparatively only a few 
points and has but an infinitesimal part of his capacity 
and power. As the original infinitely infinite series 
creates and determines the derived subordinately infinite 
series, so God creates human souls and determines their 
nature and laws throughout the whole range of their 
being. And as the two sets of mathematical series inter- 
penetrate each other and yet each remains distinct, so 
God and human souls are reciprocally immanent and yet 
they retain their respective personalities. 

The same illustration may be applied to orders of 
creatures lower than man. If an extraordinary human 
soul or great genius be represented by a subordinate 
series touching the original series at every thousandth 
term, and an average human being by a series touching 
the original at every ten thousandth term, then an 
animal might be represented by every millionth, a veg- 
etable by every billionth, a crystal by every trillionth, 
and the ether by every quadrillionth term in the orig- 
inal series. The decreasing number of terms at which 
these subordinate series touch the original series cor- 
responds with the decreasing number of points at which 



THE WORLD AND GOD 209 

these creations, descending from the highest human 
spirit to the lowest term of matter, touch the divine 
Spirit ; or it corresponds with their decreasing inner 
life. Yet all these creations are determined by the 
infinite Spirit and are dependent upon and included 
within it, as all the subordinate mathematical series are 
determined by, and included in, the original series. God 
is in all creatures, and all creatures are in God. God 
and his world are reciprocally immanent throughout, and 
yet God retains his distinct personality and power, 
and all his creatures retain their respective capacities 
and degrees of development. 

We may illustrate the same relation from our psycho- 
logical experience. An object of experience is sharply 
delimited within the field of our consciousness ; yet it is 
in our consciousness and our consciousness is in it in re- 
ciprocal immanence. In a somewhat similar way God 
holds all his states, and all finite spirits, which constitute 
his world, in his infinite consciousness or self, so that he 
is in them and they are in him in reciprocal immanence ; 
yet both he and they retain their respective individuali- 
ties. 

It follows from this view that man is a child of God, 
framed in his own image. God has breathed his own 
breath into human souls, and they awake in his likeness, 
having faculties of thought and sensibility and will that 
run parallel with his own. Though God is infinite in 
his nature and faculties and thus infinitely above man, 
yet his infinite nature has been reduced to finite limita- 



2IO THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

tion in the human soul, which is thus, subject to this 
condition, a true reproduction and copy of the divine 
Mind. 

(2) What, then, is the relation of the human body to 
God, on the one side, and to the soul, on the other ? We 
have seen that the body is a unit in the great stream of 
the phenomenal world. It has all the attributes and 
obeys all the laws of this world. It affects our 
senses of sight, sound, odor, taste, and touch, and is 
subject to light, heat, electricity, chemical affinity and 
gravitation, and thus it is proved to belong to the 
phenomenal order. At the same time it is equally 
proved to be allied to the soul in special relations. It is 
the channel through which the phenomenal world pours 
its streams of activity in upon the soul and through 
which the soul pours its activities out upon the world. 
It is the agent that immediately acts upon, and is imme- 
diately acted upon by, the soul, and thus it is the medium 
of communication and action between the soul and the 
world and between the soul and other souls. Now as 
the world is the organized thought and sensibility and 
will of God, the manifestation to us of his conscious- 
ness, the body is a specialized unit of God's conscious- 
ness or life adapted to the nature and needs of the 
human soul. The body is the point of contact at which, 
and the means by which, God impinges on our spirits, 
and our spirits impinge on his Spirit. When God in his 
world operates upon us, he does so through the body ; 
and when we operate upon the world or upon one an- 



THE WORLD AND GOD 211 

Other, we do so through the same medium. The body — 
an ontologically mental organism — is so interlaced and 
welded together with the soul that it can immediately 
affect it with its causal activity, and, conversely, the 
soul can causally affect the body and, through the 
body, the world. The soul does not appear ordinarily 
to have power over the world directly, but only through 
the body, and, conversely, the world ordinarily affects 
the soul onty through the body. When two persons 
know and affect each other, they do so through the 
intermediary links of their bodies and the world, which, 
being interpreted, means that they can know and affect 
each other only through God. God is the universal 
medium in whom we live and move and have our being, 
and all our objective knowledge and activities are 
mediated through him. 

(3) We may now attempt a fuller statement of the 
relations of God and man. God is the creative source 
and constant background of man's life. The human 
soul, coming up out of the depths of God's life by a 
process of evolution, has reached and passed the point 
of detachment from God's selfhood and attained unto 
its own selfhood or personality. It therefore maintains 
its own inner life of thought and sensibility and will 
and is charged with its own sovereignty and responsi- 
bility. The Hne of demarcation between God and the 
human soul runs between the soul and the body, the 
body being a speciahzed adaptation of God's life to the 
needs of the human soul and the special instrument of 



212 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

the soul for its communication with, and operation on, 
the world, including other human beings. God's in- 
finite consciousness includes man's consciousness in the 
sense that it embraces it in its knowledge and overrules 
it in accordance with its omniscient and omnipotent pur- 
pose. Yet the states of the finite human consciousness 
are distinct from the divine consciousness, and maintain 
their own relative freedom and responsibility. Com- 
munication and fellowship are possible between God 
and man because of their fundamental identity in nature, 
both being spirit, the infinite creative Spirit and the finite 
dependent spirit. Human rninds hold communication 
and fellowship with one another through their phenom- 
enal activities of language and bodily movements, which 
are symbols of their inner states. God communicates 
with the human soul through the phenomenal language 
of the physical world, which is a grand bible revealing 
God to man. 

But God also has deeper and more intimate and vital 
access to the human soul. It may be that human 
souls themselves in extraordinary states or conditions 
have a more direct communication with one another 
than through phenomenal symbols. There are strange 
facts connected with telepathy and related psychical 
phenomena that seem to point in this direction and 
may yet disclose a deeper world of human conscious- 
ness and communication. Much more does God have 
immediate and full access to human souls, and can sug- 
gest his thought and will to them through their faculties 



THE WORLD AND GOD 213 

of reason and conscience and will. Thoughts have 
ever irrupted into the human mind that have been at- 
tributed to the inspiration of God. There are expe- 
riences in which man believes that God is speaking to 
him through conviction and vision as surely as father to 
a child. " There is a spirit in man : and the inspiration 
of the Almighty giveth them understanding." The 
prophet and poet and man of genius whose lofty and 
sensitive souls are quick to catch heaven's light are 
specially open to divine communication, but the same 
inner light " lighteth every man that cometh into the 
world." The infinite Spirit of God is ever pressing 
upon the human spirit, endeavoring to penetrate and fill 
it, to free it from error and evil, to purify and deepen 
and ennoble it, and thus to develop it into ever larger 
and richer life. And yet through all these processes 
the Infinite respects the limitations and freedom and re- 
sponsibility of the finite. The whole organism of hu- 
manity is thus environed and saturated with the Spirit 
of God, and under this divine impact and pressure, hu- 
manity develops and advances into fuller and nobler 
life. 

Man also has access to God in thought and desire, 
prayer and worship, fellowship and obedience. In so 
far as he finds truth, he is thinking the thoughts of God, 
and thus all human knowledge is a form of acquaint- 
ance and fellowship with him. All the investigations 
of science and constructive systems of philosophy and 
glorious achievements of art are more or less direct ap- 



214 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

proaches to God's mind. God is the field of all unex- 
plored knowledge, and all our attempts to burst the 
barriers of ignorance and mystery are endeavors to 
know more of him. In thus thinking the thoughts of 
God over after him, we are entering into larger fellow- 
ship with him. Man also has a deep primal instinct 
and impulse to seek God in prayer and worship. He 
speaks to him with the confidence of a child to a father, 
and pours out his soul before him. He confesses to 
him his open faults and most secret sins, and be- 
seeches him for pardon, purity, and peace. He looks 
for indications of God's guidance, and follows the 
gleam. " Thou wilt light my candle." He catches 
frbm God visions of law and right, ideals of perfection, 
of duty, of service and sacrifice, of battles to be fought 
against hosts of darkness, and of a kingdom of light 
and truth, brotherhood and love, to be built ; and he 
girds himself up for the service, throws himself into the 
battle, and pours out of his heart the last drop of sacri- 
fice. Thus man grows in fellowship with God and 
towards the divine likeness, and ever tends to come unto 
a perfect man. 

This promising picture of human cooperation with 
God and struggle towards perfection is marred by the 
dark fact of opposition to God in so far as men in their 
blindness or their willfulness resist truth and right and 
introduce disorder and ruin into the world. But the 
broad fact remains promising and opens before us a 
vision of growing cooperation between God and man. 



THE WORLD AND GOD 21 5 

moving towards ultimate harmony, the realization of the 
brotherhood of man and the kingdom of God. 

4. Summary of Idealism 

It may be well at this point to gather up our reasonings 
and results and present them in a summary of idealism. 

(i) Let us suppose that the only existent beings were 
God, the infinite Spirit, and finite spirits, such as human 
souls, so that the universe would contain nothing of the 
nature of extended insensate matter, and there would be 
only a universe of pure spirit or mind. Let us further 
suppose that God were to create in or impress upon our 
finite spirits the- whole set and system of sensations we 
now experience in their present groupings and order of 
succession. This supposition gives us, in rough outline, 
Berkeley's idealistic theory of the world. A little re- 
flection shows us that we could not distinguish, by any 
sense test, such a world from our present world viewed 
as an extended mass of insensate matter, or viewed 
according to the theory of dualism. For according to 
the supposition we would experience all our present 
sensations of light, heat, color, sound, odor, taste, and 
touch in their present groupings and order of succession ; 
that is, we would experience the sun and stars, sea and 
land, vegetables and animals, and have all our sensational 
experiences just as we do now. 

Modern idealism constructs its theory of the world on 
essentially the same lines as Berkeley's theory, but with 
important modifications or further elaboration. Berkeley 



2l6 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

viewed God as impressing ideas upon us by an arbitrary 
creative act, as though the world were a mere play pro- 
duced in us for our entertainment, and not something 
rooted in the nature of God. Modern idealism views 
the world as the manifestation in us of the world which 
God himself experiences. According to this view, the 
world is God's own thought and feeling and will. He 
thinks the world as a construction of intellectual rela- 
tions, feels it as a vast mass of emotion and wills it as 
a mighty deed. Yet as thought, feeling, and will are 
purely spiritual states and exercises of mind, his world 
is a purely spiritual product and is an infinitely vast 
and complex and rich state of his infinite Spirit. This 
world thus springs out of God's constitution, and is his 
eternal expression of himself and his blessed activity 
and joy. 

In addition to this world, which is subjective to him- 
self, God creates or posits finite spirits, such as human 
souls, which are, in the psychological sense, objective to 
himself. They are formed in his own image with a con- 
stitution which is a finite copy of his. They are 
entities or realities in themselves, with an internal life 
running parallel to God's experience according to their 
finite capacities. God acts upon our human souls caus- 
ally, and under the play of his activity we experience the 
world, which is a reproduction, more or less symbolic, 
in our minds of God's own world. But as the divine 
world is purely spiritual, a mental state or subjective 
play of the divine constitution, so is our world purely 



THE WORLD AND GOD 217 

mental, a series of mental states that occur in us on 
occasion of the divine impact or causal activity. The 
nature of this divine activity operating immediately 
upon our souls is unknown to us, but may be conceived 
as being somewhat analogous to the action of our own 
wills. 

The objects we experience in our minds, then, are not 
copies of objects in an external and extended world, but 
are subjective sensations fused into mental unities or 
constructs and grouped or cast in spatial forms. As the 
mind is not an extended feality and none of its thoughts, 
feelings, or volitions is extended, there is nothing onto- 
logically extended anywhere, and extension is an intuition 
or form supplied by the mind and imposed upon its ex- 
periences. This was the great discovery of Berkeley, 
and has been accepted and elaborated by Kant and by 
all subsequent idealists. 

The mechanism of the universe, then, is to be con- 
ceived somewhat as follows : As the divine Mind acts 
upon the human mind, the human mind thus stirred into 
activity acts according to its own constitution and con- 
structs its own objects of experience and projects them 
in spatial forms. Human objects of experience are thus 
copies or reproductions of divine objects of experience, al- 
lowance being made for the difference in degree and na- 
ture between the divine and the human minds. When we 
perceive a flower or a star, for instance, there is no ex- 
ternal extended flower or star which we are perceiving 
and copying in our minds, but there is in the divine Mind 



2l8 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

a flower or star which is God's thought and feeUng and 
deed ; this acts upon our mind so as to stir it into action, 
and then it erects and projects the flower or star which 
is our own experience. 

The objects we experience as the world are primarily 
points in the consciousness of God, things he thinks and 
feels and does. While these objects cannot exist as 
extended insensate realities and cannot exist spatially 
separate from God, he may organize his consciousness 
into centers or systems that may be viewed by him as 
points or modes of experience objective to his mind, after 
the manner in which we view our ideas as objective to 
our minds. In this sense the whole universe may be 
regarded as objective to God. But it is still a mode of 
the divine consciousness, and is purely spiritual in its 
nature. Things are therefore centers in the divine 
consciousness, which according to their complexity have 
reached different degrees of organization. The higher 
animals are partial selves, objects in the divine mind 
that have reached such a degree of organization that 
they are near to selfhood and separation from the divine 
mind. Human souls have completed the process of 
reaching selfhood and have attained that psychological 
separateness from God that constitutes them responsible 
beings, centers of consciousness unfolding into thought, 
sensibility, and will, or personalities. This is the ideal- 
istic construction of the world. 

(2) The argument for this view starts with the soul 
itself as a piece of reality which we immediately know. 



THE WORLD AND GOD 



219 



This is \^\Q. pou sto on which the ideahst takes his stand 
and from wliich he proposes to move the world. His 
short argument at this point is that of Descartes : " I 
think, therefore I am." This bit of reahty is un- 
doubtedly spiritual in its nature. Its essence is con- 
sciousness, unfolding into thought, sensibility, and will, 
fused into personality. None of the qualities popularly 
attributed to matter inheres in the mind. It is not 
colored, or sonorous, or odorous, or sapid, or hard ; and 
it is not extended ; that is, our sensation or experience 
of redness is not red, of sound is not sonorous, of sweet- 
ness is not sweet, of hardness is not hard, and of length 
and breadth is not itself long and broad. When we ex- 
perience a circle or a square there is nothing round or 
square in the mind or even in the brain. Color is in 
the mind as a form of experience, but the mind itself is 
not colored. Space is in the mind as a form of experi- 
ence, but the mind is not spatial and is not in space at 
all. All this is matter of direct introspection and im- 
mediate experience and is not disputed among pyscholo- 
gists. We thus encounter the fact at the outset of our 
investigations that our own mind is a purely spiritual 
world ; yet it is in the mind that we really live and we 
never get outside of it. If, then, any one objects that a 
wholly mental world is inconceivable and that we could 
not live in it, he is reminded that he already lives in a 
non-spatial mental world in his own mind, and yet he is 
not troubled or inconvenienced by the fact. 

The fact that the first bit of reality we undoubtedly 



220 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

know is spirit, raises the presumption that other reality 
and all reality is of the same nature, and we now set 
out to test this presumption. We examine the outer 
material world by all possible means to determine, if we 
can, its nature. We discover at once that the secondary 
qualities of matter, the color, sonorousness, odor, taste, 
and touch which are popularly attributed to and so 
obviously appear to inhere in it, are not attributes of 
matter, but sensations of mind. The grass is not green : 
all that the physicist can find there is a mass of minute 
particles or molecules in a state of vibration. Such 
motion has no likeness to greenness, which is an experi- 
ence of the mind or mental state. So is it with all the 
other secondary qualities, sound, odor, taste, and touch : 
these are all impressions made on the mind by some 
outer reality whose nature at this point of the investiga- 
tion is unknown. This much is commonly admitted by 
dualists themselves. But the same reasoning shows that 
the primary qualities of matter, namely, space and time, 
are subjective states in the mind also. Extension is not 
something that could be transmitted to the mind through 
the senses. No extended matter streams in through 
them, but only modes of motion which are transmitted 
along the nerves by some unknown kind of action, which 
in the brain is translated by the mind into the experi- 
ence of extension. But no one supposes there is any- 
thing extended in the mind or that anything extended 
could enter the mind. Extension, then, like color and 
touch, is an experience occasioned in the mind by some 



THE WORLD AND GOD 221 

reality whose nature at this point in our inquiry has not 
been reached. We do not experience objective space, 
but we spatiahze subjective experience. Time is also an 
experience inherent in the mind. All of these qualities 
(except time) are phenomena in our minds ; that is, ap- 
pearances caused by some reality acting upon our minds. 
The great question of metaphysics is the nature of 
this reality acting upon us, in which we are environed. 
We try to penetrate to this nature through the veil 
of the phenomenal world, and especially do we try to 
unlock the secret of this world by using the key of 
our own nature which we immediately know to be 
spiritual. Examination shows that the world bears 
three great marks of mind. First, the world is marked 
by thought. It can be understood in terms of mind. 
This is the whole meaning and search of science. 
Science reads the world like a book and finds it intelli- 
gible in every part. It is essentially an intellectual fabric 
woven of mental threads throughout. It thus matches 
our minds and is an appeal of Spirit to spirit. Second, 
the world is marked by sensibility. As all its forms 
and activities express thought, so do they express feel- 
ing. It is stamped with sublimity and saturated with 
beauty and drenched with music down to its very atoms, 
and all these are manifestations of emotion. What causes 
feeling in us must itself feel, and at this point the world 
is another appeal of Spirit to spirit. And third, the 
world is will. When our will presses against the world, 
the world presses against our will ; that is, it acts exactly 



222 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

like another will. The world manifests itself to us at 
all points as activity, and this is the essential nature of 
will. We never catch the world except when it is doing 
something to us. The physicist resolves the world into 
energy, and this, again, is of the nature of will. The 
world behaves in every respect as though it were a mighty 
will, and this is another appeal of Spirit to spirit. There 
are five general characteristics of mind : unity, growth, 
law, habit, and purpose ; and these all are stamped upon 
and woven into the texture of the world and reveal its 
spiritual nature. Matter is a mode of the divine activity, 
existing only in and for intelligence. The world thus 
has the marks of spirit and matches our spirits as an 
infinite Spirit from which we are derived and in which 
we are environed. 

This summary is a mere hint both of the nature of 
idealism as a theory of the world and of the reasoning 
by which it is established. It hardly need be said that 
the proof of this system or of any system of philosophy 
cannot be absolute and final but only proximate and 
probable. This line of reasoning does not reach demon- 
stration, but it does reach such persuasion and proof as 
convince many thinkers. It does not solve all problems 
and is attended with great embarrassments, but it has 
fewer difficulties than any other theory, and any other 
construction of the world goes down under the attacks 
of critical thought. It may be only a dim glimpse of 
the truth, but it appears to be a surer word of prophecy 
than any other that has yet been uttered. 



THE WORLD AND GOD 223 

(3) Let US compress the matter into the fewest words 
as a final summary. God is the original, underived, in- 
finite Spirit, and finite spirits are derived from and de- 
pendent upon him. The world is God's consciousness 
organized into a system of thought and sensibility and 
will, and is his own constitution and eternal employment 
and enjoyment. Things are centers in the consciousness 
of God developing in increasing degrees towards self- 
hood. Animals are partial selves still included within 
the consciousness of God, but human spirits have reached 
selfhood and so have passed the point of detachment 
from the divine Mind into personality. Finite spirits 
are reduced copies of the divine Spirit, with faculties 
that faintly parallel his, tiny sparks of his being, so that 
they have fundamental kinship with God and are ca- 
pable of sharing his thought and life. God's mind acts 
upon our minds so as to induce in us our sensations, 
which are developed and organized into our conscious- 
ness of the world, the human body being the special 
point of contact and means of intermediation between 
the divine Mind and human minds. God and finite 
spirits are bound up in one society or organism in which 
the divine personality and finite personalities are distinct 
and yet all are fused into a social cosmos. God is 
central and sovereign in this world-organism of spirits, 
holding all powers and destinies in his own hand and 
yet respecting the finite freedom and responsibility of 
finite spirits. His thought, sensibility, and will surge 
through this organism to win and mold all its finite 



2 24 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

members into ethical harmony with himself and flood it 

with the fullness and splendor of his life ; and such 

realization is that 

one far-off divine event, 
To which the whole creation moves. 



CHAPTER X 

APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 

Philosophy runs straight to logical application and 
life. However abstract and subtle and remote from 
practical affairs its speculations and conclusions may be, 
yet it will irresistibly insinuate itself into all our think- 
ing, and shape and color our views at every point. Its 
solution of the general problem of the world must enter 
into the solution of every particular problem. What we 
think of the First Cause will determine what we think 
of the minutest fact and most trivial event. 

Equally ubiquitous and dominant is philosophy in 
life. A general view of the world that is held with any 
depth and earnestness of conviction will inevitably 
radiate from its central position and ramify all character 
and conduct. " As a man thinketh in his heart, so is 
he." "The most practical and important thing about a 
man," says Mr. G. K. Chesterton, "is still his view of 
the universe. We think that for a landlady, considering 
a lodger, it is important to know his income, but it is 
still more important to know his philosophy. We 
think that for a general about to fight an enemy, it is 
important to know the enemy's numbers, but it is still 
more to know the enemy's philosophy. We think the 
question is not whether the theory of the cosmos affects 
Q 225 



226 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

matters, but whether, in the long run, anything else 
affects them." It will be in order, then, to look at some 
of the applications of idealism. 

I. The Relation of Mind and Body 

(i) The relation of mind and body is one of the criti- 
cal problems and crucial tests of any system of phi- 
losophy, for here is the point where mind and matter 
directly impinge on each other and work together in our 
experience ; and the solution of this relation goes far 
towards solving the general problem of mind and matter, 
either sundering them into two radically different en- 
tities, or reducing them to one substance. All meta- 
physical systems find a cardinal relation at this point ; 
and we cannot escape the conclusion that this relation 
is some kind of interaction. That the mind acts on the 
body and the body on the mind is our constant experience, 
and we immediately know this fact as well as we know 
anything; yet the nature of this interaction is one of the 
most elusive and difficult problems of metaphysics. 

Dualism has a solution of this problem that looks 
simple and sure : the two entities act directly on each 
other. Yet this system is burdened with grave embar- 
rassment as it attempts to form some conception or theory 
of how a non-spatial mind and an extended body can 
mutually act on each other or have any relations what- 
soever. That pure spirit can in any way lay hold of 
extended matter becomes more and more difficult to be- 
lieve the more it is considered. Idealism is less embar- 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 227 

rassed at this point because in its view both mind and 
body are spiritual entities, the body being a thing or 
thought of God specially adapted to the use of the mind. 
It follows, then, that the interaction of mind and body 
is a case of like acting on like, and this is more under- 
standable to us than the case of two things so unlike as 
a non-spatial mind and an extended body acting on each 
other. According to idealism matter is not an obstruc- 
tion in the way of mind, but only a form of its manifes- 
tation. Mind masters matter, melts down its "too, too 
solid flesh," so to speak, and casts it in its own mold. 
Matter is nothing apart from mind, any more than the 
shadow is something apart from its substance ; and there- 
fore matter clings to and obeys mind as the shadow 
follows the substance. 

The case of mind and body acting on each other, then, 
is a case of mind acting on mind. We are still short 
of the full solution of the problem, for we do not know 
how mind acts on mind. We are immediately conscious 
of the mind as an active agent. It acts so as to produce 
its own thought, feelings, and volitions under its own in- 
itiative or under the stimulus of external influences, that 
is, under the impact upon it of other minds, especially 
the Universal Mind in which it lies ensphered. Mental 
causation acting between minds appears to be a kind of 
induction or contagion by which one mind induces 
its own states in another mind, or infuses them into an- 
other mind, or infects another mind with them. Mind 
is a wonderfully sensitive and absorbent substance, 



2 28 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

being quick to respond to the presence of, and open to 
invasion from, another mind. The human mind is inti- 
mately and exquisitely bound up with a special adaptation 
of the World-Life or Universal Mind in which it is en- 
vironed, and thus a constant state of interaction is taking 
place between them ; and it is through this link of the 
body that action with all other minds is mediated. 

(2) The mutual interaction of mind and body has al- 
ways been known and utilized, but the fact is now being 
more thoroughly studied and better understood. This 
interaction takes place at every point in our life, but 
popular interest is most concerned with it in connection 
with health and disease. An extensive Hterature has 
already grown up and is rapidly increasing in this field. 
Dr. A. T. Schofield, an English medical authority, has 
published seven or eight volumes on the subject, of 
which the one entitled "The Force of Mind; or, The 
Mental Factor in Medicine," is one of the best for lay 
readers. It is packed with facts and quotations from 
medical authorities and gives a list of more than a hun- 
dred books and articles on the subject. These authori- 
ties maintain that the mind can cause almost every kind 
of disease, both functional and organic. Not only such 
functional diseases as neurasthenia, hysteria, and other 
nervous ailments, but infectious and organic diseases, 
such as fever, cholera, and cancer, may be due to the 
condition and action of the mind, or the mind may lower 
the vitality and resisting power of the body to the point 
where it falls a prey to disease. 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 229 

On the other hand, the mind can cure disease, or raise 
the vitality of the body to the point where it can throw 
disease off. Dr. Schofield quotes the English medical 
authority, Dr. Daniel Hack Tuke, as saying that " men- 
tal therapeutics without hypnotism can cure toothache, 
sciatica, painful joints, rheumatism, gout, pleurodynia, 
colic, epilepsy, whooping cough, contracted limbs, pa- 
ralyses, headaches, neuralgias, constipation, asthma, 
warts, scurvy, dropsy, intermittent fever, alcoholism, 
typhoid fever, and avert impending death." Other au- 
thorities, such as Drs. Weir Mitchell and Woods Hutch- 
inson, regard such statements as exaggerations, but they 
all admit that the mind has a wide field and is a great 
power as a curative agent. 

It is not asserted that the mind can cure disease by a 
sheer act of will, though it can often do much and some- 
times work wonders in this way, but that the general state 
and action of the mind furnish the conditions in which 
disease may disappear and health be restored. Hypnotic 
suggestion, by which suggestions counteracting disease 
are planted in the subliminal mind, plays an important 
part in the theory and practice of some mental healers ; 
and however it may be got into the mind, the suggestion 
of health is undoubtedly a powerful antidote to disease. 
Knowing how the mind under a great stroke of sorrow 
may blast and wither the body in a single night and how 
joy may revive and rejuvenate it, so that the body seems 
like wax in the flame of the mind, we are prepared for 
startling facts in this field. The " stigmata " of the 



230 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

saints, in which the mind burnt right through the body, 
are supported by weighty evidence. No doubt excessive 
claims have been made for the curative power of the 
mind in disease, but that it is a vital factor in the matter 
is emphasized by medical authorities and is receiving in- 
creased attention in all quarters. 

This power of the mind over the body is the root of 
all the various forms of faith cure and is the secret and 
stock in trade of numerous quacks. Dr. Schofield 
enumerates seven forms of mental healing as follows : 
Faith cures, mind cures, prayer cures, Christian Science 
cures, spiritualistic cures, mesmeric cures, and faith 
healer cures. The stories told of the manifold and 
marvelous cures effected by this general means are well 
known, and many are the healers and healing resorts 
that can show a remarkable collection of crutches and 
other paraphernalia that have been left behind by those 
that were healed. That many of these cures are gen- 
uine is an undoubted fact, admitted by medical authori- 
ties themselves. The fact that many of them are also 
spurious does not touch the reaHty of the genuine ones. 

Unquestionably there is a large field here to be more 
fully investigated and worked, an immense latent force 
to be utilized. This is a matter that comes home to all 
of us in our personal living, and endeavors should be 
made to develop and spread the knowledge and practice 
of this art. Dr. Schofield contends that physicians 
have hitherto largely neglected the mental factor in 
disease and that of all men they should understand and 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 23 1 

use it. Ministers and Christian workers generally should 
also be interested in this work. Bodily health is a part 
of that holiness or wholeness which they are trying to 
promote, and disease and sin are often deeply inter- 
twined in their roots. Faith healing stands for a great 
fact which the church should know and use. The 
reason Christian Science has made such progress is that 
it has laid hold of this power and is putting it to practi- 
cal use. It has popularized idealism. Yet it has only 
taken what belongs to the Christian church. It is not 
contended that ministers should presume to do the work 
of physicians or that mental healing can displace medi- 
cal treatment ; but it is being shown that ministers and 
Christian workers can do much in the way of stimulat- 
ing the faith and cheering the hearts of the discouraged 
and the ill, so that their minds will operate upon their 
disordered nerves and organs as a restorative force. 
As a practical philosophy idealism may be a vast reser- 
voir of latent power that may yet be released for the 
healing of humanity. 

(3) It may be proper in this connection to say a 
word about Christian Science. Christian Science is a 
perverted form of ideaUsm. Its ideahsm consists in 
affirming that the only reality is mind ; its perversion 
consists in affirming that matter is a delusion of " mor- 
tal mind," a pure error of belief which is to be eradi- 
cated and destroyed as though it were a disease germ. 
This idea runs through Mrs. Eddy's book and all her 
writings and is asserted again and again. For instance, 



232 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

she says in an article in The Independent of November 
22, 1906 : " God, Spirit, is infinite, matter and material 
sense are null, and there are no vertebrata, mollusca, or 
radiata." This is not the language of idealism, which 
accepts the testimony of the senses as to the existence 
of vertebrata, mollusca, and radiata, and then proceeds 
to inquire into the real nature of these things. Open 
" Science and Health " at almost any page and one finds 
this doctrine, that matter is a pure delusion to be rooted 
out of the mind. " Matter, or body, is but a false con- 
cept of mortal mind," we read on page 177. So disease 
is a nullity, a pure fiction of the imagination, and the 
way to cure it is simply to cease believing it. Not only 
disease, but bodily health, food, air, the great globe 
itself, and all material means and activities are equally 
entire delusions which should be cast out of our minds. 
Death itself is a delusion and would cease to occur in 
our experience if we only ceased to believe in it. Mrs. 
Eddy casts overboard anatomy, physiology, biology, 
astronomy, and all science, repudiates organized human 
knowledge, and turns the universe into a topsy-turvy of 
delusion. All this is not Berkeley's idealism or any 
form of idealism ; it is not to be classed under any 
system of philosophy. Undoubtedly Mrs. Eddy has 
heard of Berkeley and got some inkling of his theory. 
As is well known and has been thoroughly proved, she 
derived her ideas and her practice from P. P. Quimby, 
an uneducated clock-maker who turned mind healer in 
Portland, Maine. Of Quimby, Rev. Lyman P. Powell, 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 233 

in his book on Christian Science says : " He read much. 
The Bible was ever in his hand, and sometimes Berke- 
ley." Quimby also taught that "Matter is error." 
Whether Mrs. Eddy ever read Berkeley or not we do 
not know, but some of his teaching has evidently trickled 
into her mind. But she has absorbed Berkeley's ideal- 
ism in the perverted form that matter, instead of being 
a phenomenal experience of objective reality, is a pure 
delusion or error which should be rooted out of the mind. 
The basis of Christian Science is thus a spurious form 
of idealism. Idealism itself in all its historic forms, how- 
ever, repudiates Christian Science as an illegitimate child 
and will acknowledge no responsibility for it. 

2. Immortality 

The immortality of the human soul has ever been one 
of the great hopes of the world, extending almost as 
wide and deep as the consciousness of the race, engag- 
ing the thought of the profoundest thinkers, poets, and 
prophets, producing some of our noblest literature, fur- 
nishing the main ground and goal of religion, building 
strong and fine character, and comforting the human 
heart in its deepest and darkest sorrows ; and it has not 
withered under the light of modern knowledge, but is 
still a living problem of religion, science, philosophy, and 
popular interest. We are concerned with the problem 
as it stands in the light of idealism. What place and 
support, if any, does it find in this philosophy ? 

(i) Idealism gives a logical place and strong support 



234 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

to the immortality of the soul in its basal principle that 
the human soul is a piece of reality in itself. It is one 
of the fundamental principles of all our idealistic reason- 
ing that the soul is not a phenomenal experience of an 
objective reality, such as are the body and all material 
things, but is subjective reality which we immediately 
know. It has derived its being from God and become 
separated into its independent life and developed into 
individuality and personality. It is an intensely active 
being, a dynamic center and agent, with its own in- 
herent energies of thought, feeling, and will. 

To this dynamic agent the principle of the conserva- 
tion of energy must now apply. This principle is one of 
the established doctrines of modern science. The mani- 
fold forms of energy we see manifested in the material 
world are all being constantly transformed into one an- 
other, but are never increased, diminished, or annihilated. 
Motion becomes heat, heat becomes electricity, elec- 
tricity becomes chemical affinity, chemical affinity 
^j becomes light, and thus the Protean circuit runs its 
endless round. But at no point in this process does any 
infinitesimal atom of energy drop out of the circuit and 
vanish into nothingness. Experiment always finds the 
transformed energy exactly equal to the original, and 
any deficiency or excess in the resulting product would 
be unthinkable. The mind cannot find any point in the 
process where any minutest unit of energy could lapse. 
Thus the sum total of energy in the material universe 
remains a constant quantity. 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 235 

This result of physical science must now be translated 
into metaphysical concepts. These physical energies 
are the phenomena impressed upon our minds by 
spiritual energies or mental operations in the Divine 
Mind. The meaning of this infinitely interlaced, ex- 
quisitely balanced system of physical energies is that 
the divine thoughts are a unified system in which change 
at one point is attended with a compensating or a corre- 
sponding change at other points. A divine thought can 
never perish and leave no trace, but abides in the eternal 
consciousness. God never dies or loses any part of his 
life. 

The same principle now applies to the human soul. 
As it is a center and agent of mental activity, a finite 
copy of God's infinite Spirit, it can change the form and 
direction and conditions of its activities, but its activities 
themselves can never cease ; its spiritual energy can 
never be spent and vanish. It is a bit of the immortal 
energy of God that can never die. There is no escape 
from this conclusion unless we annul the principle of 
of the conservation of energy, which is one of the corner- 
stones of all our science. 

(2) But, it may be said, this law assures the perpetuity 
of the spiritual principle or energy of the soul, but not 
of its personality. The soul is immortal in its essence, 
but it melts back into the infinite Spirit whence it came, 
as raindrops fall back into the sea. Our answer to this 
powerful objection to personal immortality is that the hu- 
man soul has developed into personality paralleling that 



236 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

of the divine Spirit and has thereby attained a height of 
worth and a fixity of character that point to perpetuity. 
Personahty is the highest product of the process of evo- 
lution. The long, slow, unwearied climb, purchased at 
every step by a great cost of sacrifice, from the ether to 
the atom, from the atom to the crystal, from the crystal 
to the cell, and from the cell to man, has been struggling 
towards personality as its goal. A consciousness fulP' 
rounded into intellect, sensibility, and will is an end in 
itself and the highest and final flower of the universe. 
Now when the means have fulfilled their purpose they 
drop away and leave the end as their blossom and fruit. 
The wheat stalk perishes, but the wheat is gathered into 
the garner. Were the end to perish with the means, - 
the fruit with the seed, nothing would remain to justify 
both means and end, and the whole process of develop- 
ment would come to nothing and thereby be reduced 
to irrationality. The immense and age-long process of 
evolution through which the Divine Mind has created 
human souls is vindicated only as this process issues in 
permanent results. That personalities, the highest and 
costliest embodiments of worth, should be produced 
through the travail of divine birth only to be flung as 
rubbish to the void, puts to confusion all our ideals of 
reason and right. 

" I do not know," says Martineau in an eloquent pas- 
sage, ^ " that there is anything in nature (unless indeed 
it be the reputed blotting-out of suns in the stellar 

1 " Study of Religion," Vol. II, page 356. 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 237 

heavens) which can be compared in wastefulness with 
the extinction of great minds : their gathered resources, 
their matured skill, their luminous insight, their unfail- 
ing tact, are not like instincts that can be handed down; 
they are absolutely personal and inalienable ; grand con- 
ditions of future power, unavailable for the race, and 
perfect for an ulterior growth of the individual. If that 
growth is not to be, the most brilliant genius bursts and 
vanishes as a firework in the night. A mind of balanced 
and finished faculties is a production at once of infinite, 
delicacy and of most enduring constitution ; lodged in a 
fast perishing organism, it is like a perfect set of astro- 
nomical instruments, misplaced in an observatory shaken 
by earthquakes or caving with decay. The lenses are 
true, the mirrors without a speck, the movements smooth, 
the micrometer exact; what shall the Master do but save 
the precious system, refined with so much care, and build 
for it a new house that shall be founded on a rock ? " 

The permanence of personality is further confirmed s 
by its persistence through all earthly vicissitudes. While 
it develops from germinal unconsciousness to full-blown 
personality, yet after emerging into selfhood it retains 
its central core of consciousness, which does not change 
with the yeUrs but remains as the identical self. Its ' 
outward circumstances are in a state of ceaseless flux 
and at times pass through tremendous shocks and up- j 
heavals ; its very body flows away from it in a steady j 
stream and is constantly replaced with new tissues; its 
subjective experience is in a state of incessant change 



238 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

and development, and at intervals encounters catastrophic 
crises and is swept by terrible storms ; and yet none of 
these rolls it from its base, but its central self persists 
as the same personality. If it can survive such constant 
and deep changes and even repeatedly put off the entire 
body and clothe itself in a new garment of the flesh, 
will it not survive the still greater shock of death and 
weave around itself a form of body adapted to its new 
condition ? 

To this conclusion have come some of our ablest 
scientific thinkers, the class of men who find it most 
difficult to accept such views. " What we are claiming," 
says Sir Oliver Lodge, in his " Science and Immortality," 
" is no less than this — that, whereas it is certain that 
the present body cannot long exist without the soul, it is 
quite possible and indeed necessary for the soul to exist 
without the present body. We base this claim on the 
soul's manifest transcendence, on its genuine reality, 
and on the general law of the persistence of real exist- 
ence. , . . Immortality is the persistence of the essen- 
tial and the real ; it applies to things which the universe 
has gained — things which, once acquired, cannot be let 
go." The view of John Fiske is also of special interest 
and worth : " Now the more thoroughly we comprehend 
that process of evolution by which things have come to 
be what they are, the more we are likely to feel that to 
deny the everlasting spiritual element in Man is to rob 
the whole process of its meaning. It goes far toward 
putting us to permanent intellectual confusion, and I do 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 239 

not see that any one has as yet alleged, or is ever likely 
to allege, a sufficient reason for our accepting so dire an 
alternative. . . . The greatest philosopher of modern 
times, the master and teacher of all who shall study the 
processes of evolution for many a day to come, holds 
that the conscious soul is not the product of a colloca- 
tion of material particles, but is in the deepest sense a 
divine effluence. According to Mr. Spencer, the divine 
energy which is manifested throughout the knowable uni- 
verse is the same energy that wells up in us as conscious- 
ness. Speaking for myself, I can see no insuperable diffi- 
culty in the notion that at some period in the evolution of 
Humanity this divine spark may have acquired sufficient 
concentration and steadiness to survive the wreck of 
material forms and endure forever. Such a crowning 
wonder seems to me no more than the fit climax to a 
creative work that has been ineffably beautiful and mar- 
velous in all its myriad stages."^ 

(3) The immortality of the soul is further attested by 
its needs and desires and instincts that reach out be- 
yond this life. The whole soul is a bundle of cravings, 
physical, mental, affectional, moral, and spiritual. Some 
of these, such as the procreative passions, do fulfill their 
purpose, reach their full satisfaction, and are sloughed 
off, evolution leaving them behind. But others of them 
reach no such limit and are like parabolic curves that 
never become a closed circuit, but ever sweep a wider 
area. 

i"The Destiny of Man," pages 115, 117. 



240 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

Our mental faculties are of this infinite nature. They 
unfold their tentacles and throw them wider and farther, 
laying hold of the world with an ever ampler grasp, 
feeling deeper into all its crevices, penetrating to its 
core and reaching out to the stars, but never approach- 
ing a limit to their inquiries and processes, or to their 
capacities of growth, and never attaining full and final 
satisfaction. The infinitude of truth is an assurance 
that the human intellect will never lose its occupation 
through finding no more worlds to conquer. It has 
eternity stamped upon its constitution as something that 
can never finish its work and be cast aside as a means 
that has reached its end. 

The affectional nature has in it the same seeds of 
immortality, as it never outgrows its power of loving 
and its craving for social satisfaction, and clings to its 
fond object more firmly as it approaches the verge of 
earthly life. The moral nature has the same parabolic 
properties as it starts problems and experiences that 
never reach their final answer and goal in this life, but 
run ever forward and throw themselves unsolved and 
unsatisfied into another world. So strong is the de- 
mand of conscience, or the " categorical imperative," 
for a future life as the necessary fulfillment of its 
needs that Immanuel Kant rested on it as a sufficient 
foundation for belief in immortality. The human will 
does not become a spent force with time, but persists 
in its ambitions and passions and often puts forth its 
intensest efforts and energy in the last hours of life. 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 2:41 

The body passes the limit of its growth and efficiency 
and shrinks to the point of its dissolution, but the soul 
in its intellect, sensibility, and will is bounded by no such 
limit and has the capacity of endless development and 
enlargement. 

Still further, the soul has a positive yearning for an 
endless life, an instinct of immortality. All its faculties 
look forward and are expectant of some better thing to 
come. The human spirit shrinks from extinction and 
has a mighty passion for life. It stands on the shore 
of time, peering over the ocean of eternity that it may 
discern " the green mountain top of a far, new world." 
It regards all its work as incomplete and only a prepara- 
tion for a larger work ; all its growth as only the seed 
of a fuller growth and finer fruitage. This life, rich and 
glorious as it may be, it holds as a poor and pitiful frag- 
ment without more life. Man buries his dead and re- 
fuses to believe they have vanished into nothingness, 
but hopes to meet them again. He enters the dark 
shadow of death, believing he will emerge into the 
eternal morning. 

This passionate belief in immortality is world-wide 
and age-long. It is not peculiar to any race or time or 
condition, but is one of the most universal and persistent 
facts in the world. Science has not withered it, but 
rather it grows with all our growth in civilization and 
culture. Agnosticism cannot kill it. In 1883, when 
near sixty years of age, Thomas H. Huxley wrote : " It 
is a curious thing that I find my dislike to the thought 

R N 



242 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

of extinction increasing as I get older and nearer the 
goal. It flashes across me at all sorts of times with a 
sort of horror that in 1900 I shall probably know no 
more than I did in 1800. I had sooner be in hell." 

Religion has rooted itself in this belief and grown out 
of its soil into great systems of faith and life. Art 
glorifies it. Philosophers, poets, and prophets have 
voiced it in imperishable words. 

My own dim life should teach me this, 
That Ufe shall live forevermore, 
Else earth is darkness at the core, 

And dust and ashes all that is. 

Here sits he shaping wings to fly : 
His heart forebodes a mystery : 
He names the name Eternity. 

'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, 
Oh life, not death, for which we pant ; 
More life, and fuller, that we want. 

— Tennyson. 

Though inland far we be, 
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea 
Which brought us hither, 
Can in a moment travel thither, 
And see the Children sport upon the shore, 
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. 

— Wordsworth. 

If we are to trust the witness of the soul in its own 
constitution, we must believe that it is not to perish with 
the body, but is endowed with the power of endless life. 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 243 

If it is an honest piece of an honest world, its cravings 
and instincts are not false hopes, but true prophecies. 

(4) The same conclusion is involved in the Father- 
hood of God. We have seen that idealism reaches the 
viev^r that human souls are the offspring of the Universal 
Soul and bear its image and are knit up with it in a 
social organism. Men are thus the children of God, and 
he sustains to them the paternal relation, and they to 
him the filial relation. This mutual relation involves 
mutual obligations of fellowship and faithfulness. In 
producing human beings God has passed the point of 
producing mere things or even partial selves and has 
brought forth children that bear his image and are cap- 
able of sharing his life and love. Such children, having 
been begotten, are thenceforth essential elements in the 
divine life and necessary to its completeness and satis- 
faction. " The Father seeketh such to worship him." 
God having brought forth his children can never be the 
same without them. They are not mere means to higher 
ends, but are ends in themselves with inherent and es- 
sential life and worth. They are objects of the eternal 
Father's love and have their home in his heart. Such 
a relation is a timeless one and reaches no temporal limit, 
but runs on, growing richer and sweeter forever. For 
his own sake the Father will not cast his children to 
the void. 

This argument is greatly strengthened by the fact 
that God has implanted the need and expectation of 
immortality in the human heart. No matter by what 



244 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

intermediary processes the soul may have acquired this 
instinct and craving, it has evolved such a constitution 
in God's world and under his providence, and therefore 
he is responsible for it. Such an implanted constitution 
puts upon its Creator the obligation to be faithful to it 
and fulfill this deep need and intense expectation. To 
suppose that he is begetting children and endowing 
them with these capacities and hopes only to disappoint 
them is to suppose that he is making cruel sport of his 
children and is a fateful monster more dreadful than we 
could believe any human father could be. " Who can 
believe," says Martineau, "that the everlasting Mind ful- 
fills its end by disappointing every other } . . . Is the 
eternal design of Perfection to be gained by the frus- 
trated aspirations of countless ephemeral generations ? " 
The universal human heart thinks better of God, and 
trusts his promise as implanted in its own constitution. 

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust : 

Thou madest man, he knows not why, 
He thinks he was not made to die ; 

And thou hast made him : thou art just. 

(5) A further confirmation of this hope is the in- 
completeness of this world. From many points of view 
it bears the marks of a work begun but not finished. It is 
a workshop in which the products are only roughly 
shaped, a school in which education is carried only 
through its primary grades, a home in which the children 
are only partially reared. There is a call for a finishing 
factory, a higher school, and a final home. Especially 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 245 

is the world incomplete and disjointed in its social and 
moral aspects. Its frightful inequalities and injustices, 
vice and crime, call for adjustment and judgment. If 
the whole fabric of our moral life is not an illusion and 
delusion, but the reality and tragedy we believe it to be, 
it must issue in a final assize in which retribution and 
rewards are justly distributed. "If Death gives final 
discharge," says Martineau, "alike to the sinner and the 
saint, we are warranted in saying that Conscience has 
told more lies than it has ever called to their account." 
Thus man appears to be only a germ and bud in an 
incomplete world, and his whole constitution and con- 
dition prophesy a future world of richer soil and more 
genial clime in which he will unfold his faculties into the 
full-blown blossoms of perfected humanity. He only 
" stands half-built against the sky," a being who " partly 
is and wholly hopes to be." If we must face this world 
as a finality, it turns to irrationality, and it can be under- 
stood and justified only as we believe that 

The best is yet to be, 

The last of life, for which the first was made : 

Our times are in his hand 

Who saith, " A whole I planned, 

Youth shows but half; trust God : see all, nor be afraid!" 

(6) The most powerful objection to human immortality 
is the dependence of the soul on the body and its appar- 
ent dissolution in death. This dependence is close and 
mutually sympathetic at every point and persists through 
life. The soul and body develop together and keep pace 



246 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

with each other at every step. Every mental state or 
action is accompanied with a corresponding physical 
action and every physical change in the body induces a 
corresponding change in the mind. The soul is delicately 
sensitive to all changes in the body and goes up or down 
with its condition. As the body fails in old age, the soul 
declines with it and sometimes becomes only a vestige 
or reminiscence of its former self. And in death the 
same crisis that stills the heart also seems to extinguish 
consciousness and obliterate the soul forever. In short, 
we know the soul only in connection with the body, and 
the two seem to come into existence and to perish 
together. 

But there are competent answers to these strong ob- 
jections. They are based upon our ignorance of a. 
disembodied state, and we cannot rest an argument upon 
this ignorance, for our experience is limited and there 
must be more things in heaven and earth than are known 
in our science or dreamt of in our philosophy. It is 
admitted in our idealistic construction of the world that 
the soul is dependent on the body, which is the point of 
contact and means of communication between the soul 
and God and, through God, with the world and other 
souls. But there are strong grounds for thinking it is 
only a means and one from which the soul can disengage 
itself. The body bears all the marks of being the instru- 
ment or tool of the soul. The soul sharply distinguishes 
itself from the body, handles it, resists it, masters and 
molds it to its own use. At times the soul overpowers the 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 247 

body and strikes through its flesh and bones with crush- 
ing force. As life advances, the body loses its strength 
and suppleness, its responsiveness to the demands of 
the soul, and becomes stiff and refractory, inefficient 
and impotent. It degenerates into a worn-out machine, a 
blunted and broken tool. This crippled condition of the 
body is an adequate explanation of impaired mental 
powers in old age. The mind itself does not appear to 
grow old, and often retains its faculties keen and strong to 
the last moment of advanced life. The soul still has its 
powers, but the bodily mechanism refuses to respond to 
its bidding. The telegraph operator still retains his skill, 
but his instrument has stopped working. Why the 
brain and whole body should wear out is for the phys- 
iologist to say, but the fact does not cancel the reasons 
for believing that the soul survives it. Besides, as we have 
seen, the soul is continually shedding the body through 
life : may it not finally disengage itself from it in death ? 

So is myself withdrawn into my depths, 

The soul retreated from the perished brain, 

Whence it was wont to feel and use the world 

Through these dull members, done with long ago, 

Yet I myself remain ; I feel myself : 

And there is nothing lost. Let be, awhile ! 

— Browning. 

The soul is less and less dependent on the body 
through life. It starts in utter bondage to the body, 
literally sunk in the flesh. But as it develops it outstrips 
the body, and the soul rises above the sense, and the 



248 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

spirit above the flesh. More and more, as life advances, 
the soul becomes self-dependent and dominant, loosed 
from servitude to the body and endowed with internal 
resources. In some instances, when the body has shrunk 
and withered almost to the vanishing point, the soul 
flames out in the greatest intensity and power. It looks 
as though the soul were gradually outgrowing the body 
and letting go of this crutch, while it is developing wings 
on which to soar into a wider, freer life. The present body 
is only a temporary hut for the soul while its proper 
palace is being built. Paul had some such idea of the 
body. He viewed it as an " earthly tabernacle " and 
contrasted it with " an house not made with hands, eter- 
nal in the heavens." " It is sown in corruption ; it is 
raised in incorruption : it is sown in dishonor ; it is 
raised in glory : it is sown in weakness ; it is raised in 
power : it is sown a natural body ; it is raised a spiritual 
body." The soul may thus cast away "this muddy 
vesture of decay," because it has become an outworn 
garment, in order that it may weave around itself a 
closer-fitting, more supple and serviceable, and more 
splendid robe in the eternal world. 

It is not death to fling 

Aside this sinful dust, 
And rise, on strong exulting wing, 

To live among the just. 

The idealistic interpretation of death is that this event 
is a crisis in the life of the soul in which its relation to 
the universal life of God undergoes a change or passes a 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 249 

critical point. The body, as we have seen, is the tie and 
means of communication between God and the soul in 
this world or stage of existence. Death unlooses this 
tie, casting the body back into the general stream of the 
world or life of God and releasing the soul into some 
other mode of union with God at present unknown to / 
us. The dead body remains to us as the symbol of this 
changed relation, but the further state of the soul is 
hidden from us. That it enters upon some other mode 
of existence in which it has a larger and richer share in 
the beatific life of God is our belief, based upon all the 
reasons for our hope of immortality. 

(7) The practical value of this hope is worthy of be- 
ing classed among the reasons for it. It must be admitted 
that the belief in immortality has been an immense fact 
and force in human character and conduct in all ages. 
It is one of the deepest and strongest and most fruitful 
roots of religion. It reenf orces many of the motives of this 
world that shape the thoughts and actions of men, and 
raises new and tremendous ones of its own. It crowns 
this world with worth and dignity and destiny that raise 
it to a higher power and invest it with eternal significance. 
It lightens up the sorrow and gloom of this world with 
the light of a better world. If this hope were universally 
destroyed, the effect on human character in private and 
social life would be disastrous beyond conception. It 
would be like severing the cords of gravitation that bind 
the planet to the sun : the world would reel and stagger 
off into the darkness of despair and degradation. The 



250 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

shock of such loss of faith might not be immediately 
felt, and there would be sufficient momentum of heredi- 
tary morality and habit to hold the world in its course 
for a time. But let the world be unloosed from ideals 
of permanent worth and power and there would be no 
sufficient attraction to told it up to high resolve and 
strenuous endeavor. If men believe they are beasts, they 
will presently live as beasts. The flesh would overmas- 
ter the spirit, and human conduct would slip and slide 
toward sensuality. The human soul could not perma- 
nently bear " the heavy and the weary weight of all this 
unintelligible world," and would faint and fall under the 
burden. A hope the presence of which is so essential 
to the health and happiness, the rationality and perma- 
nence, of this world, and the loss of which would so un- 
dermine it and let it crash into ruin, has upon it in this 
fact a deep stamp of reality. It is more rational to be- 
lieve it true than false. 

(8) What effect does the theory of evolution have 
upon the hope of immortality .'' The popular impression 
appears to be that its effect is unfavorable. The theory 
seems to suggest that all things come by a slow, irresist- 
ible process of development, and bloom and ripen on the 
vast mystic tree of life, and then inevitably drop and 
perish in the general stream of nature ; and the depress- 
ing thought is borne in upon us, at times with powerful 
force, that the human soul is only the topmost and finest 
blossom on the tree and falls and perishes as any common 
leaf. But we have already seen that the doctrine of 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 251 

evolution is only a descriptive account of the successions 
of the phenomenal world, and leaves untouched the 
causal power that underlies them ; and we have further 
seen that this causal power is the intelligence and will of 
God, who is energizing in the world and producing all its 
activities and its whole development in the order of his 
plan and purpose. This resolves evolution into a pro- 
cess of the spiritual world in which souls have their 
home, and thus relieves it of its depressing implications 
and sets it in a friendly attitude towards this hope. 

But there is still further confirmation in the theory. 
Evolution throughout its whole course is a process of 
producing ends which then enter as means upon a higher 
stage of development. The atom appears to be the prod- 
uct of one incomprehensibly long period of evolution, 
but it was no sooner produced than it was taken up into 
higher combinations in molecules and chemical com- 
pounds. This inorganic matter was then transmuted 
into organized forms of life, and throughout this long 
climb we see the same principle at every stage and step. 
The mineral is food for the vegetable, the vegetable for 
the animal, and the animal for man. The apple, having 
grown upon the tree, is detached from its stem and passes 
into higher life. The end of each stage of evolution 
marks a critical point where the product is cut off from 
the process and raised to a higher level. The direction 
in which this principle points is obvious : it points to a 
higher life for man. His soul ripens on the stem of the 
body and then is detached and the body perishes. But 



252 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

the whole analogy of evolution requires that this most 
precious product should not be lost, but should pass to a 
higher stage and be devoted to a more exalted use, or be 
transmuted into finer, richer life. Shall the atom and 
crystal and vegetable be on their way to a higher destiny 
at the lower end of the scale of evolution, and yet the 
human soul at the top fail of this hope and fall into 
nothingness ? Evolution itself has written all over it the 
promise and potency of some better thing, and its long 
and costly process is adequately completed and justified 
only when the human soul, its topmost blossom and 
finest fruit, passes into a higher world and an immortal 
life. 

But in completed man begins anew 

A tendency to God. Prognostics told 

Man's near approach ; so in man's self arise 

August anticipations, symbols, types 

Of a dim splendor ever on before 

In that eternal circle life pursues. — Paracelsus. 

(9) A word may be said on the idealistic conception 
of the nature of immortality, or of the life of the soul after 
death. On this point, of course, we are left to specula- 
tion and are not warranted in going far. It appears 
that the present stage of existence is a womb in which 
the soul is being developed into personality and character 
and out of which it is born into a freer, richer life in 
fellowship with the Father. Fechner's conception of 
this final state of the soul has commended itself to many 
idealistic thinkers. The mind receives and stores up 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 253 

many various sense impressions of the same object, such 
as visual images, auditory sensations, and tactual im- 
pressions. These remain distinct in the mind, and yet 
they all blend into unity in a mental object or construct. 
In a similar way, Fechner supposes, human souls pass 
into the Universal Soul and there abide, each retaining 
its own personality and yet all blending into the divine 
life. God is the Infinite Spirit who gathers into himself 
the spirits of his children and holds them in his eternal 
fellowship, where they share his life and yet retain their 
personal existence. Human souls are thus falling back 
into the bosom of the Father, where they dwell with him 
forever. 

(10) The whole course of this argument applies to 
all human souls as beings of essential worth ; but it 
impresses us most vividly in the case of extraordinary 
souls. Greatness brings out inner principles in accum- 
ulated power. We are scarcely aware of gravitation in 
a mote floating in the air, or in a grain of sand, but it 
becomes tremendous in the pressure of a mountain on 
its base, or in the pull of the moon or the sun. Life 
seems of small worth in a microbe, but it mounts up into 
immense value in man. Human souls also differ in rank 
and value, and a great soul may overtop a crowd of 
small ones as a mountain overshadows its foothills. 
All the arguments that converge upon the hope of im- 
mortality grow more weighty and impressive as a soul 
looms upon us in greater magnitude and nobility. We 
may not have the insight to see that the meanest slave 



254 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

or lowest savage has in him a germ of immortal worth ; 
but when mighty men stride across the stage of the 
world and achieve works of supreme genius, or put forth 
deeds that reshape the ages, or win crowns of sublime 
heroism, or rise to summits of lofty character, or wear 
the blood-red robes of sacrificial service and suffering, 
we have a powerful conviction that these souls are of 
immeasureable worth and were not born to die. Socrates 
and Plato, Milton and Shakespeare, Cromwell and 
Lincoln, are too great and precious, we feel, to be ex- 
tinguished as meteors in the night, and we are satisfied 
only as we are assured that they are set as stars in the 
firmament of eternity. These arguments for immortality 
support their claims to endless life, but they also support 
these arguments. 

This principle rises to its supremest expression and 
power in the person of Christ. His resurrection is a 
historical and not a metaphysical question ; but the 
question raised by his life and character does come 
within the philosopher's field. Christ wrought a work 
and achieved greatness of character that are supreme 
and unapproachable among men. As he now stands 
before us, set in the vast frame of nineteen centuries, 
he is a lofty and sublime Figure and shines the Master 
of the world. He has breathed his Spirit through the 
ages and reshaped all their institutions ; he laid his 
spell upon the centuries, and they have acknowledged 
his sway and arranged themselves around him as their 
attractive center and organizing power. Christendom 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 



255 



to-day, however partially and imperfectly as yet, is 
stamped with his image superscription. It dates its 
calendar from his birth and weighs all its institutions, 
laws, literature, and life in his balances. His sayings 
are the seeds of our modern world, and more and more 
will they spread and bloom on every shore. 

The character of Christ is the one flawless diamond 
of human history. All moral and spiritual elements are 
refined and compacted in him in perfection. Truth and 
trust, purity and patience and peace, righteousness and 
reverence, justice and generosity, meekness and manli- 
ness, gentleness and might, goodness and love, sympathy 
and service and sacrifice combine in him in faultless pro- 
portion and harmony, and shine out in purest splendor. 
He walked the earth the Friend of all classes and con- 
ditions of men and drew to himself the rich and the 
poor, the learned and the illiterate, the noble and the 
degraded, the sinful and suffering and sorrowing. He 
bore the mysterious burden of the sin of the world, and 
his love for men paid the last full measure of its devo- 
tion on the Cross, That Cross is the center and summit 
of earth's tragedy, and is at once the deepest wound in- 
flicted by human sin and the means of its cure. The 
character of Christ is incomparably the most precious 
possession of the human race. 

All our arguments for immortality converge upon 
him as in a focus and there blaze and burn in their 
greatest intensity and power. These arguments prove 
his immortality, but much more does he prove these 



256 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

arguments. If that great Soul and white Spirit vanished 
in the night of death and left only a handful of dust 
under the Syrian stars, then we feel that we live in an 
irrational world which devours its noblest children and 
betrays all its promises. The human mind and heart 
will ever refuse to accept such a wreck of reason and of 
hope. Christ brought life and immortality to light, and 
in his light this glorious hope finds its highest confirma- 
tion and certitude. 

Apart from my flesh shall I see God. — Job 19: 26. 

3. The Problem of Evil 

Let us now enter the dark region of evil, carrying the 
torch of idealism, and see what light of explanation or 
alleviation it may cast upon the gloom. 

Several preliminary remarks may be made. The first 
is that as the world is not all good, so it is not all evil, 
but is a mixed world in which lights and shadows are 
intermingled. We may not be able to estimate the rela- 
tive proportions of the two, but we can hardly escape 
the conviction that on the whole the good outweighs the 
evil. The world of life appears to be a general scene 
of satisfying activity and happiness, and suffering and 
sorrow are only spots on its brightness or minor chords 
or occasional discords in its music. It is true that at 
times and points the evil does seem to overshadow the 
good and even to blot it out, but these experiences are 
exceptional. Evil is apt to impress us more vividly 
than good; it advertises itself more loudly and gets 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 257 

more consideration. A spot on the sun attracts general 
attention, while its steady shining occasions no remark. 
Exceptions are usually more conspicuous than the rule, 
and for the very reason that they are exceptions and 
not the rule. Good is the rule in this world, and evil 
the exception. At any rate, every sane mind must ad- 
mit that there is a vast amount of good in the world. 
This good is so much on the credit side of the account 
and helps to reduce the debit side of evil. Our problem 
is not to account for an evil world, but for a world that 
contains much good mixed with some evil. 

Our second preliminary remark is the obvious one 
that the problem of evil far outruns our power to solve 
it. We may be inclined to think that the world might 
have been constructed on some better plan which would 
have avoided all evils and resulted in a world of pure 
harmony and joy ; and perhaps we may even be tempted 
to imagine that we could have outlined such a world 
ourselves. 

Ah Love ! could you and I with Him conspire 
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire, 
Would not we shatter it to bits — and then 
Re-mold it nearer to the Heart's desire ? 

Yet this must be a presumptuous thought, and we can- 
not suppose that our finite faculties have such breadth 
and depth as would enable them " to grasp this sorry 
scheme of things entire " so as either to condemn it or 
to suggest a better plan and pattern. A fly on the cab 
of a rushing locomotive has little comprehension of the 



258 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

ponderous machine and infinitely less of the revolving 
earth and flying stars. Even so are we caught in the 
mighty mechanism and meshes of a vast organism that 
far outruns our power of comprehension. Nevertheless, 
we are in the world that we may understand and master 
it as far as we can ; and however terrible the tangle and 
starless the night of evil, we dare not give the problem 
up or pass it by in despair, but are impelled by our 
deepest instincts to strain our vision and strength to the 
utmost in the endeavor to find its clew and pluck the 
heart out of its mystery. And we do reach points of 
view and moods of rtiind and heart that help us to see the 
world in a somewhat more rational and tolerable light. 

A third preliminary remark, growing out of the last 
one, relates to the definition of evil. It is usually best 
in beginning a discussion to fix accurately the meaning 
of its critical terms, and thus avoid illogical arguments 
and confusion of thought. But some ideas are too big 
or too vague to admit of sharp definition. Evil is pre- 
eminently such a word. We know or feel that we know 
what it means in a large dim way, but it would trouble 
us to draw around it very definite boundaries. In gen- 
eral it stands for whatever is harmful to us ; it is any- 
thing that conflicts with right and good. It is thus the 
opposite of good, the shadow that follows the light. 
But the value of this general idea is impaired by the 
fact that we do not always know what is good, even for 
ourselves. Evil also in our experience assumes mani- 
fold forms, and these serve to confuse us. What ex- 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 259 

plains one branch or aspect of it will not explain an- 
other, and this increases the difficulty of finding the 
common root. There is thus a large subjective element 
in our conceptions of evil that varies with our condition, 
feelings, and ideals. To be able to define evil accurately 
and exhaustively would be equivalent to understanding 
and explaining it. We can therefore only take concrete 
instances of what we regard as evil, and leave its defini- 
tion bordered and blurred with the mystery in which 
the whole problem is involved. ' <'" 

The field of evil falls asunder into two main divisions : 
the evil in nature, and the evil in the human world ; and 
we shall take these in their order. 

I. According to idealism, nature is wholly included 
in the life of God as his creation and is the expression 
and play of his thought and feeling and will, his eternal 
employment and enjoyment. This fact would seem to 
rule out of it the possibility of any evil. It should pre- 
sent to us a scene of pure rationality and goodness, of 
light and love. Yet it appears to be clouded with shadows 
and at points with deep darkness, and men have always 
looked at it with bewildered, pained eyes and fearful 
hearts. 

(i) One aspect of this apparent evil is the seeming 
waste in nature. Its deserts, mountain solitudes, oceans, 
and ice-bound regions seem out of all proportion to its 
habitable areas ; and the world as a whole seems a vast 
globe of rock with the thinnest rind of life ; and even in 
the field of life there appears to be an enormous prodi- 



26o THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

gality of wonderful organisms with no worthy end in 
view. 

" Take, for example," says a writer in a communica- 
tion in the New York Sun, of October 22, 1908, who 
says he has " simply been hurled into the ranks of ma- 
terialism " by such facts, "that wonderful order of insects 
known as the Ephemerce. Nature in her prodigal way 
has lavished upon these children of the air, these brief 
guests of the sun, a physical equipment that is a posi- 
tive marvel of beauty and delicacy. Their wings, espe- 
cially when observed under a powerful microscope, reveal 
a precision of mechanism and a splendor of coloring that 
are simply startling. Surely, one would surmise, there 
is here some substantial aim in view for all this effort, 
some really durable benefit to be derived from such a 
wealth of natural endowment. Alas for such a theory ! 
These insects are produced by the millions and millions, 
simply to live for a single day. Born at sunrise, they 
reach maturity at noon, and die of old age at sunset. 

" Or again, turning to another field of creative energy, 
there is found in the obscure depths of certain tropical 
forests in South America a wonderfully rare and beauti- 
ful orchid. It is perhaps the most exquisite of the entire 
family, and its marvelous harmonies impel even the rude 
and ignorant natives to regard it with an attitude of 
mingled awe and reverence. During the early days of 
its development it presents but little promise of its future 
glory, but finally the moment of perfect fruition arrives 
and it reaches the golden culmination of its career. For 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 261 

exactly two hours this idyllic creation reigns supreme ; 
for exactly two hours its ravishing beauty holds the 
casual spectator spellbound ; and then the flower begins 
to droop, its tints begin to fade, its enchanting purity 
begins to soil, and decay, swift and silent, effaces the 
fairy vision." 

It is a sufficient answer to this objection to say that 
the whole system of nature is a delicately balanced or- 
ganism in which every part contributes something to 
every other part, however remote it may be or unrelated 
it may seem. The ocean ministers to the mountain, the 
mountain to the plain, and no flower blushes unseen but 
sheds some fragrance into our life. But the whole objec- 
tion fades aw^ay when set in the light of idealism. God is 
immanent in his world, fashioning insect and flower and 
enjoying the work of his hands. The materialist first 
empties the world of God and then bases an argument 
against God on the fact that there is nobody in it to en- 
joy it. But let God be in his world, or let the world be 
in God, and all these things become beautiful in their 
time. "I sometimes think," says John Burroughs, "that 
the earth and the worlds are a kind of nervous ganglia 
in an organization of which we can form no conception, 
or less than that. If one of the globules of blood that 
circulate in our veins was magnified a million times, we 
might see a globe teeming with life and power. Such 
is this earth of ours, coursing in the veins of the Infi- 
nite." ^ God is omnipresently conscious of all these 

1 "Birds and Poets," p. 56. 



262 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

crowded worlds, and no desert or ocean depth or hidden 
flower or tiniest insect or infinitestimal microbe is use- 
less or uninteresting to him. 

(2) We encounter a more serious appearance of evil 
in the strife that pervades nature, sowing it with passion 
and turning it into a universal battlefield or vast slaughter- 
house. Animals generally are armed with weapons of 
offense and defense. Hugh Miller, in his " Testimony 
of the Rocks," referring to the early geological ages, 
speaks of the "exhibition of tooth, and spine, and sting, 
— of weapons constructed alike to cut and pierce, — to 
unite two of the most indispensable requisites of the 
modern armorer, — a keen edge to a stiff back ; nay, 
stranger still, the examples furnished in this primeval 
time of weapons formed not only to kill but also to tor- 
ture." The fact of the enormously prolific reproduction 
of animals by which vastly more are born than can find 
food and survive precipitates a terrible " struggle for 
existence " in which nature is " red in tooth and claw 
with ravine." Thus the law of nature seems to be, 
" Kill ! kill ! " and it appears everywhere to write its 
purpose and spirit in characters of blood. This law of 
struggle and death goes down through the vegetable 
world ; and it appears to sink deep into the rocky rind 
and molten core of the earth, where it manifests itself in 
the cosmic agonies of earthquake and volcano. 

We may gaze at this sanguinary aspect of nature and 
multiply its frightful features until the brain reels and 
the heart grows sick and we feel like flying from nature 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 263 

as a murderous mother. " If one meditated," says 
Victor Hugo, " on the sinister shapes patiently lying in 
ambush in the abyss, not a bird would dare to brood, 
not an Qgg would dare to hatch, not a flower would dare 
to open, not a breast would dare to give suck, not a 
heart would dare to love, not a spirit would dare to take 
flight." How can we look at these things and still be- 
lieve in the beneficent purpose and essential goodness 
of God .'' Several considerations may be presented in 
the way of explanation. 

(a) The amount of real suffering in nature is vastly 
less than this picture would lead us to suppose. Ani- 
mals suffer much less pain with their low nervous 
organization than we attribute to them out of our own 
experience ; and they have no foresight of and little 
fear in connection with death. We have already ad- 
verted to this point (pp. 157-158) and need only recall 
the words of Mr. Darwin: "When we reflect on this 
struggle, we may console ourselves with the full belief 
that the war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is 
felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the vigor- 
ous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply." 

{d) The things in nature that we view with physical 
and aesthetic and even moral aversion and horror may 
be seen in a very different light by the divine conscious- 
ness. We appreciate and enjoy nature at the points 
where we have special interest in it by reason of our 
pursuits, studies, or temperaments, and other aspects of 
it may excite our dislike. But the wider is one's intel- 



264 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

lectual and aesthetic range, the broader and deeper is his 
appreciation of nature and the fewer are the points in it 
that arouse his fear or other antipathy. What excites 
one man's deep aversion may thus be another man's in- 
tense dehght. Two instances of this falling under the 
author's personal notice may be adduced. We were 
once present at a literary club when the unpleasant and 
horrible things in nature came into the discussion, and 
one of the members, who was a literary man and an 
author of some distinction, expressed his disgust and 
horror at maggots. But at once another member, who 
was a biologist of some note, spoke up in dissent from 
any such view and declared that there was nothing 
more interesting to him than those same repulsive mag- 
gots, maintaining that they are creatures of wonderful 
structure and most fascinating habits. On another oc- 
casion we were present in an operating room when an 
eminent surgeon was removing a dreadful cancer. 
Holding out to us a handful of the cancerous growth 
and squeezing it with evident glee through his fingers, he 
pronounced it " beautiful stuff." It was not beautiful 
to the poor woman who was suffering from the fright- 
ful thing, but to him as a scientist and surgeon who 
was a speciahst in the study and removal of cancers and 
was in the act of saving the woman's life, it was of 
deep interest. " In our imagination," says a popular 
writer on cancer, " we associate cancer with everything 
disgusting and horrible ; looked at through the micro- 
scope, however, it is really very beautiful."^ 

^ Burton J. Hendrick in Mc duress Magazine for July, 1909. 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 265 

There is no form or life or aspect of nature, however 
repellent or frightful, that is not interesting to somebody. 
The fearsome shapes which Victor Hugo pictured as 
lying in ambush in the sea and which he thought, if 
they could be seen, would paralyze all hearts, so far 
from frightening the Psalmist, only moved him to ex- 
claim, " Praise the Lord, ye dragons and all deeps." 
The awful mountain heights and canon depths that 
overwhelm the uninitiated with horror, rouse the expert 
mountain climber to the highest pitch of excitement and 
enjoyment. The earthquake that crushes the rocky 
ribs of the earth, spilling the sea on the land, shaking 
down cities, destroying thousands of human lives and 
rolling a wave of horror around the world, is viewed by 
the geologist as an interesting incident in the develop- 
ment of a cooling and shrinking globe, or as another 
stroke of the hammer upon a planet that is still in the 
shop. By thus extending the width of our understand- 
ing and interest, we bring more and more of nature 
within the range of our appreciation and approval. 

This process carried to its limit gives us the universal 
range and interest of the Divine Mind. Nature is the 
work and play of God. The heaved-up mountains and 
far-flung stars are his work, suggesting stress and 
strain. Many things in nature, such as the odd conceits 
and fantastic forms of the animal and vegetable worlds, 
hint at the play of his humor. The whole face of 
nature is carved into features and seamed with lines 
that suggest an infinitely rich emotional life. God is 



266 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

enjoying himself and is often at play in nature. It is 
true that some of this play looks rough and ruthless to 
us, but do we not like strenuous play ? God has other 
interests than those we know as " moral," even as we have 
ourselves. He is not only the infinite Lawgiver and 
Judge, but he is also the infinite Thinker and infinite 
Artist. Nature is a field in which many of these interests 
are being exercised, and therefore it contains much that is 
dark to us but light to him. We cannot put ourselves 
in his place with all his infinite faculties, and so we 
cannot see nature as he sees it ; but we may well believe 
that with his universal insight and appreciation he sees 
everything "beautiful in its time." 

(c) But we have not yet touched, it may be said, the 
deepest nerve in the moral problem of nature, the strife 
that saturates it with hatred and blood. At this point 
we must recall the fact that animals are but partial selves 
and fall wholly within the divine life. They do not 
rise to the moral plane, and are not to be judged by 
moral standards. There is no moral hatred in nature. 
Yet even after we have granted this, it may still be 
difficult for us to conceive how such activities and con- 
flicts and sufferings can be going on within the divine 
life, but one or two hints at explanation may be barely 
suggested. 

The world of nature is the developing life of God, and is 
ever rising towards separate personalities, which it reaches 
in man and we know not in what other still higher beings. 
But it is a universal law of life that it develops only under 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 267 

the stress of opposition and conflict. It is the resultant 

of opposing conditions and forces. Body and brain are 

the outgrowth of infinite battles. The heart gathers its 

honey from countless nettled flowers. There appears 

to be no escaping this law, even in those forms of life 

that are still included within the divine life. All nature, 

exhibiting the infinite wealth and play of the life of God, 

shows 

That life is not as idle ore, 

But iron dug from central gloom, 

And heated hot with burning fears, 
And dipt in baths of hissing tears, 

And batter'd with the shocks of doom 

To shape and use. 

Does this mean that this stress enters into the life of 
God as a personal experience ? The suggestion is highly 
speculative, but the tendency is strong to think that it 
may contain some deep and mysterious truth. As our 
own character is the result of temptation overcome and 
conflicting elements held in check and harmony, so it 
would seem that there must be some state corresponding 
to this finite condition in the infinite Mind. The fact that 
" the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain " 
seems to point to a laboring God, or to a God who is 
holding under his control struggling elements that would 
otherwise escape into lawlessness. The Persian Dualism 
drove this cleft into ultimate reality so deep as to sunder 
it into two eternal Principles, Light and Darkness — an 
impossible conclusion from the point of view of philoso- 
phy. But there may be a hint of truth in the concep- 



268 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

tion. God has elements and activities in his being that 
must be held in subordination, a struggle that may be 
pictured in the strife in nature ; and the resulting har- 
mony is his perfect and blessed character. But this 
perfection depends upon stress of will and the joy of 
victory. This is not to attribute any dark spot or core 
of evil to God, but only to allow him such experiences as 
are the eternal conditions and crowns of righteousness. 
It is the exercise of his self-control and the self-affirmation 
of his holiness. 

(d) It must also be considered whether nature is 
a closed system, or whether it is part of a larger 
scheme which has shaped it. Now the fact is that 
man grows up out of nature and transcends it, and his 
presence in it may therefore throw some light on its 
structure. Nature is his school of development and 
education and the field of his struggle and attainment. 
Has not the school, then, been adapted to the scholar, and 
the field to the worker .'' Has not nature been sown with 
difficulty and danger and strife for the development of 
human personalities .'* We may even go farther and 
hold that nature has had incorporated in its structure 
elements and conditions that anticipated human sin, as 
a new community may build schools and hospitals and 
prisons before there is any call for them, foreseeing that 
such means of education and healing and punishment 
will be needed. Every part of the divine plan was 
necessarily framed as a harmonious part of the whole, 
and the earlier parts were shaped to fit the later. It 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 269 

follows that nature was fitted up in anticipation of the 
coming of man, and this view of it may throw a ray of 
light on some of its dark aspects. God might have made 
nature somewhat different if he had fashioned it purely 
for his own expression and pleasure ; but he was framing 
a larger system which was to include rebellious spirits. 

Our conclusion at this point is that there is no real 
evil in nature, but only what appears to us as strange 
forms and conditions of good. 

II. This leads us to the evil in the human world. 
The problem grows darker and more difficult in this 
field, for its evil is frightful. The whole face of society is 
seamed and scarred with every line and feature of evil, 
and the human heart is a scene of warring passions, 
pain and pathos, tragedy and tears. Poverty and pesti- 
lence, disease and suffering and death, strife and war, 
vice and crime, — manifold are the fires and furies that 
kindle a hell on earth. How can we view this scene 
and hold our faith in a good God .-' How does idealism 
construe human evil in its world-plan ? 

(i) Some things that may appear to us evil, are not evil, 
but, as we found in nature, are only surprising shapes of 
good. The general fact that human life is placed under 
the necessity of labor and must grapple with difficulties 
and dangers is not evil, but a fundamental good. The 
age-long battle with nature has been the education of the 
human race. Man has had to wrest his bread from re- 
fractory soil, and he has made it blossom and bear rich 
grains and fruits. He has had to fight with fire and 



270 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

flood, with the ruthless sea, with unseen assassins that 
fill the very air, and out of this contest have grown his 
inventions and triumphs. Fire and flood have been 
captured and trained into his nimble servants, the barrier 
of the stormy sea has been smoothed out into a great 
highway of travel and trade, malignant microbes have 
had their fangs extracted, and on the stairway of his 
own achievements man is mounting to mastery. It is 
thus that life advances and men are made. A bird 
might think that it could fly more lightly and swiftly if 
there were no air to resist its wings, and we may enter- 
tain notions as mistaken and foolish. 

The inequalities of the human world are not an evil 
as a general fact. It is true that they often present 
frightful aspects, and in particular instances are griev- 
ous social wrongs, but in general they are the necessary 
outgrowth of differing human abilities, and conduce to 
human welfare. It would not be best that all brains 
should have the same capacity and quality, and out of 
these varying powers and possessions grow the infinite 
variety and richness of our human world. Poverty is 
often bitter bread, but it is food that has nourished 
giants. Rarely have the great men of the world been 
cradled in luxury, but mostly they have been bred in 
hardship. If we were constructing or reconstructing 
the world, we would be tempted to leave out these hard 
conditions and upholster it in universal ease and com- 
fort, but we would thereby relax and lower manhood 
and work infinite harm. 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 27 1 

Poor vaunt of life indeed, 

Were men but formed to feed 

On joy, to solely seek and find the feast ; 

Such feasting ended, then 

As sure an end to men. 

(2) Looking deeper into our problem, we see that 
good often grows out of positive evil. Disease and 
suffering must be viewed as evil in themselves, and yet 
in many ways they work good. Pain is a warning to 
protect life. The body must have food and drink, and 
hunger and thirst are its cry for them. When the hand 
or any part of the body touches fire, the burning pain 
is the telegraphic message sent up to the brain, 
saying, I am in the fire : take me out. An ache or 
a pain anywhere in the body is the symptom of dis- 
order or disease. The throbbing head and rheumatic 
pang or fever's fire are nature calling upon us to remove 
the root of the pain from the disordered system. 
Trembling nerves and sleepless nights are a protest 
against too much work and worry. Pain is thus the 
sentinel that stands at every pore of the body, the track- 
walker that watches every fiber of muscle and nerve, the 
red light nature swings across our track to warn us there 
is danger ahead. Physical pains, then, are not demons 
sent to torture us, but rather angels to warn and guide 
us. 

Pains are also penalties. Vice sows seeds that spring 
up in a fiery harvest. Bleared eyes and pimpled face 
and rotten tissues and delirium tremens are nature's cry 
and scream under outrageous treatment and the penalty 



272 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

she inflicts for such a course of conduct. Our social 
wrongs, our selfishness and strife, unfaithfulness to one 
another in the fine relations of life, our envy and hatred, 
inflict upon us the penalties of unrest and unhappiness 
and often of ruined lives and broken hearts. We can- 
not complain against such pains as are righteous retri- 
bution, and we could not annul or escape them without 
working deeper harm. 

Pain has still higher use as a means of discipline. It 
may penetrate to the deepest fountains of our affectional 
nature and unloose sympathy and love. Never does the 
tide of affection flow through a home so deep and strong 
and tender as when a loved one lies upon a bed of 
suffering. Pain softens asperities, smooths away prej- 
udice and ill feeling, and draws dissevered minds and 
hearts into harmony. Sorrow touches a community into 
sympathy, and may bind a nation or the whole world 
into mystic unity. It is a discipline in patience and 
self-control, calmness and power. Rightly received, it 
deepens and enriches the whole nature. Suffering and 
sorrow appear to be necessary to the growth of great 
souls. Souls nurtured in ease and comfort are soft- 
fibered and flabby, and they grow into strength and 
nobility only as they are beaten upon by storms. Even 
the highest art springs out of the soil of suffering. " If 
I could make you suffer for two years," said an eminent 
teacher to a noted singer, "you would be the greatest 
contralto in Europe." "They learn in suffering what 
they teach in song." As the pearl is the product of the 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 273 

suffering of the shellfish, so are many of the finest gems 
of human character the product of pain. Even the 
Saviour of the vi^orld was a " Man of Sorrows," and was 
" made perfect through suffering." 

Temptation, too, has its place in the development 
of the soul in righteousness. There is no wrong in 
being tempted, but by resisting the wrong the soul 
chooses and fixes and deepens its decision for the right. 
The sins of others may thus become the means of our 
saintship ; their vices promote our virtues. This does 
not excuse them, but it helps us. " Ye thought evil 
against me, but God meant it unto good." This prin- 
ciple throws a broad light over the moral evil of the 
world. Wrong as it is in itself, it may yet be the con- 
dition of our growth in holiness ; it is by fighting 
against it that we develop righteousness and win the 
crown of victory. The world, through battling with and 
conquering its own evils, is ever rising on its dead self 
to higher things. 

Religious faith has ever rooted itself deep in the soil 
of suffering and sorrow. The pains and penalties, evils 
and mysteries of the world, so far from destroying or 
benumbing faith, have aroused it into masterful strength 
and inspired it with that sublime submission in which it 
exclaims, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him." 
It is when weighted most heavily with the burdens and 
woes of life that the soul falls " upon the great world's 
altar stairs," and is sure they " slope thro' darkness up 
to God." 



274 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

And thus evil, however wrong in itself, is yet a soil 
out of which some of the finest flowers of good may 
grow. There is a soul of good in things evil. " In this 
world," says Richard Rothe, " all Good, even the fairest 
and noblest, — as Love, — rests upon a ' dark ground,' 
v/hich it has to consume with pain and convert into pure 
spirit." We should then hesitate to reconstruct the 
world along lines of universal ease and happiness lest 
in removing apparently evil conditions, we eliminate 
conditions and forms of good, pulling up the wheat 
with the tares. " However easy," says Martineau, " it 
may be to picture to ourselves a world clear of this or 
that imputed blemish, we constantly find, when we 
attempt, by reasoning out the conditions, to make 
provision for its departure, that it is inseparably inter- 
woven with the pattern of the whole, nay, that if its 
threads were withdrawn, some of the most delicate lines 
and finest colors of the tissue would unexpectedly dis- 
appear." Let the world be as bad as it may, the fact 
remains that out of it there do grow good men. 

(3) At this point we encounter the theory that evil 
is the necessary condition of good. Friedrich Paulsen 
states this view as follows : " We have the same relation 
here as between light and darkness. The painter can- 
not paint without employing shadows ; his aim, however, 
is not to paint shadows, but lights and colors. So, too, 
the poet cannot paint without shadows; he needs the 
ugly, the vulgar, and the base. It is not his purpose, 
however, to portray these, but the beautiful, the good, 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 275 

and the grand, and in order to bring them out more 
clearly he places the base side by side of the good, to 
confound the evil and exalt the good. So, too, the good 
exists in history and in life for its own sake, and evil for 
the sake of the good, as a stimulus, as an obstacle, as a 
foil. It is a negative quantity, valueless as such ; it 
receives a kind of power and reality only through its 
opposite, the good. But its power does not benefit it, 
for it is characteristic of evil that it has no constructive 
force, because it is divided against itself. It has, as Kant 
once said, 'the quality, inseparable from its nature, of 
being opposed to itself and self-destructive.' This is 
also shown by the fact that there is no positive anti- 
morality ; immorality is, like error, without law. All 
truth forms a unified system, but there is no system 
of errors. There is no mark, says Epictetus, for the 
misses." 1 

This is a favorite thought with the poets : — 

There shall never be one lost good ! What was, shall live as before ; 

The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound ; 
What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more ; 

On earth the broken arcs ; in heaven a perfect round. 

— Browning. 

Oh, yet we trust that somehow good 

Will be the final goal of ill. 

To pangs of nature, sins of will, 
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood ; 

That nothing walks with aimless feet ; 
That not one life shall be destroyed, 

1 " A System of Ethics," p. 328. 



276 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
When God hath made the pile complete. 

— Tennyson. 

All nature is but art, unknown to thee ; 
All chance, direction, which thou canst not see ; 
All discord, harmony not understood ; 
All partial evil, universal good ; 
And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite, 
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right. 
, — Pope. 

4 

Evil thus clings to our finite constitution as a 
necessary condition of our good : only God is free from 
this condition, and in him alone is perfection. There is 
a fascination in this view and a truth in it, as we have 
seen. It does explain the hard conditions of growth and 
struggle through which we must fight our way to de- 
velopment and mastery ; and it helps us to see that even 
the moral evil of others, when we resist it, works for our 
good. God also can turn evil to good in ways we can- 
not see. " Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee : 
the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain." Neverthe- 
less, we refuse to let this principle lead us into the moral 
absurdity that " Whatever is, is right," for then every- 
thing is right and nothing is wrong. This lands us in a 
pantheistic fatalism in which all moral distinctions are 
obliterated. Such a doctrine is intolerable to our con- 
science and is contradicted by experience. We revolt 
against believing that a malicious falsehood " is right," 
however it may be turned to good in its consequences ; 
a lie is a black spot in the universe which no whitewash 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 277 

can cover. If the world of human sin and guilt is the 
reality of tragedy and tears we believe it to be, it cannot 
be sweetened with the rose water of an easy optimism. 
Singing, "God's in his heaven — All's right with the 
world," does not change the hard, stubborn facts of the 
world. Even Huxley revolted against this view, and 
thought the old theologians were nearer right because 
they " recognize the realities of things." 

"The doctrines of predestination," he says, " of origi- 
nal sin, of the innate depravity of man and the evil fate 
of the greater part of the race . . . faulty as they are, 
appear to me vastly nearer the truth than the ' liberal,' 
popular illusions that babes are all born good, and that 
the example of a corrupt society is responsible for their 
failure to remain so ; that it is given to everybody to 
reach the ethical ideal if he will only try ; that all partial 
evil is universal good, and other optimistic figments, such 
as that which represents Providence under the guise of 
a paternal philanthropist, and bids us believe that every- 
thing will come right (according to our notions) at last." 

It is difficult or impossible for us to draw the line be- 
tween apparent and real evil, and at this point our prob- 
lem shades off into the mystery that ever borders it. We 
can see many ways in which evil does work good, but 
this does not change the essential nature of moral evil, 
and does not afford a complete solution of the problem. 
We must face the hard facts and bear the pain of this 
mystery at every point, and not fly to an opiate that 
promises easy but false relief. 



278 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

(4) Further light is thrown on our problem by the 
course of history which in its broad current has been the 
evolution and progress of good in the world. There is 
an ascending scale of powers in man, rising from the 
lowest physical appetites and passions, through prudence 
to conscience, and on up to the highest spiritual faith 
and aspiration. The lower of these powers are the 
fiercer and more ruthless, and the higher are the gentler 
and seem the weaker ; and thus it might be expected 
that the lower would overmaster the higher, sweep every- 
thing before them, and submerge the spirit in the flesh. 
Yet in the long run the reverse of this process is realized. 
Cool, calculating prudence checks and tames passion ; 
conscience, with its higher sense of right, masters 
prudence, and faith transfigures conscience. The gentler 
higher powers exert a steady pressure on the lower that 
rationalizes and then moralizes and finally spiritualizes 
them. 

This process is illustrated in the growth of the individ- 
ual, from the appetite and passion of the babe and child 
through the stage of prudence to the higher attainments 
of moralized manhood and spiritualized sainthood. But 
the individual is an epitome of the race, passing quickly 
through the stages which the race passed through slowly, 
gaining in a few years what has cost the race millenniums. 
The curtain of history rises on a scene of appetite and 
passion in which war constantly rends the social fabric 
and saturates the earth with blood. Slowly this chaos 
passes into more prudential arrangements in which the 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 279 

slaughter of captives gives way to more useful and more 
humane slavery, and tribal conquests and combinations 
grow into nations and empires. Conscience then asserts 
its claims with ever increasing urgency, and right con- 
tends with might. Great combinations of power, such 
as the Roman Empire, retain their ascendancy only so 
long as they broadly represent right : when they grow 
corrupt, they decline and fall. Finally, the higher ele- 
ments of spiritual life, faith and faithfulness, righteous- 
ness and reverence, goodness and gentleness, mercy 
and meekness, sympathy and sacrifice, assert their 
power and become dominant in individual and social and 
national life. The Roman Empire falls, but a Kingdom 
not of this world undermines it and silently extends its 
ramifications over the globe. " The meek shall inherit 
the earth." 

Thus the course of history is the gradual supercession 
of the lower by the higher powers of man. Ideas con- 
quer bayonets, and faith molds ideas. Might gives way 
to right, and prudence to piety. Of course there are 
eddies in this stream, but the main current flows in this 
channel. A glance at the world to-day compared with 
its condition five thousand or two thousand years ago 
shows how far it has moved in this direction. There is 
yet immense room for progress, and the millennium is 
far in the future, but enough has been attained to show 
that "through the ages one increasing purpose runs," 
and to beget the hope that the final issue will be the 
victory of the right and good. Evil is diminishing and 



28o THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

good is increasing in the world, and this fact eases the 
pressure of this problem on our minds. 

(5) The struggle of the lower to dominate the higher 
stages of the evolution of the world furnishes one theory 
and ground of evil that contains a truth. From ether 
to atom, and on up through molecule and crystal and 
vegetable and animal to man, evolution climbs on its way, 
steadily rising from lower mechanical energies and laws 
up through sensation, instinct, and spontaneity to self- 
consciousness, freedom, and responsibility in man. But 
as each higher stage emerges out of the lower, the lower 
tends to cling to the higher and to fetter it and drag it 
down. The mechanical laws of the ether and atom tend 
to block the growth of the crystal and may thwart and 
deform it. The crystal may bind the vegetable, and 
the vegetable the animal. We see the same principle 
illustrated more clearly at the upper end of the scale. 
The instincts, impulses, and passions of the animal may 
survive in man and at times terribly burden and bind 
him in a lower bondage. The flesh wars against the 
spirit. This animal nature is good in its place, and 
becomes evil only when it is permitted to mount into 
mastery. Civilization passes through the same stages, 
old institutions, such as slavery and polygamy, that may 
have been socially useful and humane in one age, sur- 
viving in the next as a cruel wrong. There is a large 
element of relativity in right and wrong, and what is 
right in one age may be wrong in the next. Thus evil 
is the dominance of lower over higher stages of develop- 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 281 

merit, the survival of what was once good but has become 
bad. 

A striking illustration of this form of evil is seen in 
the experience of the Apostle Paul. " I know," he says, 
" that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing : 
for to will is present with me, but to do that which is 
good is not. For the good which I would I do not : but 
the evil which I would not, that I practise. But if 
what I would not, that I do, it is no more I that do 
it, but sin which dwelleth in me. I find then the law, 
that, to me who would do good, evil is present. For I 
dehght in the law of God after the inward man : but I 
see a different law in my members, warring against the 
law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity under 
the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched 
man that I am ! who shall dehver me out of the body 
of this death ? " The old nature was a survival in Paul, 
and involved him in this terrible internal war. 

This principle is an aspect of the law of heredity. 
Heredity is an immense good within proper limits, but 
when it passes these limits and carries an outworn ele- 
ment or law beyond its own stage and lingers as a 
burdensome or antagonistic survival, it becomes evil. 
It is the function and duty of the higher life to suppress 
the usurping lower life and drive it back into its proper 
place, and when the higher life fails to do this, it falls 
into evil or sin. This principle does not give us a com- 
plete theory of evil, but it discloses one fruitful source 
of it and throws some light on its nature. Evil is 



282 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

/ rebellion of the lower nature against the higher which 

\the higher fails to put down. 

(6) The taproot of our problem is the presence and 

/ power of sin in the world. However he came into this 
condition, man is in a state of disharmony and rebellion 
against his own sense of right and his own civil and 
social laws ; and this disobedience transgresses what he 
knows or believes are the commands and laws of God. 
Growing out of this perverted state of heart and will 
arise the individual sins and social wrongs and the vice 
and crime that are the great burden of evil in the world 
and the cause of so much of its sufferings and tears. 
These states and acts of human sin must reap their ret- 
ribution, and hence the fiery harvest of penalties and 
pains that spring up in individual and social life. These 
are the necessary outgrowth of sin, and could not be re- 
mitted without disorganizing the world. Man must pay 
the price of being a responsible creature in bearing these 
penalties as the consequence of his misdeeds. Without 
such retribution the world would not be morally respect- 
able and would not be a moral world. However hard 
and at times frightful these penalties may appear, they 
are really good in their ultimate results and are a benefi- 
cent provision in the constitution of the world. 

It may be objected, however, that a grave injustice 
has been incorporated in these penalties in that they are 
made hereditary, the evil that men do flowing down in 
a corrupt stream into the lives and the very nature of 
their descendants. This fact grows out of the social 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 283 

constitution of men by which they are welded and fused 
into solidarity. Its effect is to increase enormously the 
responsibilty of each individual in that his acts and 
states affect not only himself but also his offspring. 
But while this hereditary current does carry the conse- 
quences of personal evil down the stream, it also sets 
afloat on the same stream a precious cargo of good, 
which becomes the opulent inheritance of descendants. 
And still further, while the heredity of evil is limited to 
"the third and fourth generation," cutting its course 
short by its own wickedness, the heredity of good is 
unlimited, and extends to "a thousand generations," 
thus accumulating an ever increasing store of good in 
the world. The hereditary tie is a beneficent bond to 
bind the generations together, but its advantages may 
be perverted by human unfaithfulness into a corre- 
sponding disadvantage. Yet no man is ever so blighted 
and bound in evil by heredity that he does not have some 
freedom and responsibility in determining his own char- 
acter and destiny. 

(7) At this point we are met with the great question, 
Why did God permit evil in this world at all .'' Why was 
not human sin, with all its penalties and evils, shut out 
of the world so that humanity would unfold into per- 
fectly pure beings, forming a harmonious and happy 
brotherhood .-• The proposal may look easy at first sight, 
and has strongly appealed to many minds. But it in- 
volves a contradiction : it asks for human free agency 
without the possibility of its choosing evil ; for person- 



284 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

ality without responsibility. Such a world appears not 
to be possible in the nature of things. Personality is a 
fusion of intelligence, sensibility, and will into a self- 
governing and responsible self. The power of free 
choice enters into the essential constitution of such a 
self, and could not be taken away without fatally impair- 
ing and destroying it. Any prohibition or device that'^ 
would prevent a moral agent from choosing evil would 
equally prevent him from choosing good or making any 
choice at all ; that is, it would cancel the will and destroy '•■ 
responsibility. A system of restraints in a bank that 
would debar the employees from being dishonest would 
equally debar them from being honest; it would simply 
reduce them, so far as their bank operations were con- 
cerned, to machines without any moral character and 
power. So any system that would exclude evil from 
the world would equally exclude good and limit the 
world to the level of vegetable and animal life. God 
cannot work a contradiction ; he cannot make a finite 
part equal to the whole, or parallel lines meet, or a curved 
line as short as a straight line between two points. So 
he could not produce personalities having the power of 
choice, and yet not having the power of choosing evil ; 
for the conception is a contradiction in terms. God \ 
could exclude moral evil from the world only by also | 
excluding moral good and thereby creating a non-moral I 
world. 

Evil is thus the obverse side of good, the shadow that ) 
follows the hght. The possibility of evil is the price we 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 285 

must pay, and that God must pay, for the possibility of ) 
good. But the prize is worth the price. A moral world 
shadowed with evil is better than a non-moral world. 
Better that we stand wearing the crown of responsibility, 
though at times it pierce us with thorns, than drop the 
crown and sink to the level of a beast. 

Rejoice we are allied 

To that which doth provide 

And not partake, effect and not receive ! 

A spark disturbs our clod ; 

Nearer we hold of God 

Who gives, than of his tribes that take, I must believe. 

This rolls the responsibility for human sin off God 
upon man. "God made man upright; but they have 
sought out many inventions." Man has at many points 
refused the good and chosen the evil, and so has brought 
upon his world all this weight of woe. Yet it was better 
in God's sight that man should have the sovereign power 
of choosing good and evil than that there should be no 
moral world. The world as it lies in evil is yet a good 
world in God's sight, or he would never have called it 
into existence. He has the power of restraining evil 
within tolerable limits, — he can at least cut off evildoers 
from the earth, — and thus can keep evil from overbal- 
ancing the good and throwing the world into moral chaos. 
Notwithstanding the dark shadows that human wrong- 
doing casts upon it, God sees that the general picture of 
the world is worthily significant and good. 

(8) What is God's own attitude towards the evil of 



286 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

the world? Is he indifferent towards it, or is he strug- 
gling with it to conquer it and bring it into subjection to 
and harmony with himself ? Many indications point to 
his cooperation with good against evil. Every man has 
in his own conscience a witness that his Maker is on 
the side of right and against wrong. The human soul, 
bearing the image of God, feels itself obliged to struggle 
for good and against evil, and thereby reflects the infinite 
life of God. The rewards and retribution woven into 
the whole texture of this world point to a just and good 
God who loves righteousness and hates iniquity. The 
course of history, as it rolls forward out of old evils into 
" sweeter manners, purer laws," is proof that the Provi- 
dence that rules over it is good. The religions of the 
world are all based on the faith that God is just and 
good, and the supreme religion shows us God incarnated 
in his Son, whose Cross is the utmost expression of God's 
sacrificial love for men. 

I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ 
Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee 
All questions in the earth and out of it, 
And has so far advanced thee to be wise. 

The infinite Spirit of God is thus exerting a steady 
impact and pressure on the souls of men to inspire them 
to resist and overcome evil and choose and attain the 
good. All the agencies and activities of good in the 
world are under the guidance and stimulation of his 
presense and power. He is no indifferent spectator of 
this evil world, but is on its battlefield as the great Com- 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 287 

mander and Leader of Righteousness, and is himself en- 
gaged in a mighty grapple with the hosts of wickedness. 
While he must respect the sovereign free agency and 
responsibility of his moral creatures, yet he brings to 
bear upon them all his resources of influence and per- 
suasion, punishment and love, to conquer their evil, win 
them to his fellowship, and transform them into his like- 
ness. His ultimate aim is a kingdom of universal right- 
eousness and love, in which all enmity shall be put down 
and He shall be Lord of all. 

History's pages but record 
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the 

Word. 
Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne: 
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown, 
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own. 

(9) But this world is not complete in itself, and is only 
part of a larger world. The present is always running 
into the future for its further development, completion, 
and final vindication ; it is always a fragment that im- 
plies the whole, a seed growing towards its fruit. The 
world is rolling forward into an eternal future, and its 
rudimentary stage and dark aspects wait for larger de- 
velopment and fuller light. We cannot follow the battle 
into that unseen realm. But as its tides are rising to- 
wards victory in this world, we can well believe that they 
will there sweep on to ultimate triumph. The unjust 
inequalities and rewards of this world will there be 
leveled up and redressed, and its partial rewards and 



288 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

retributions be perfected. The Father will not have 
fulfilled the desire of his heart until he has put all things 
in subjection under his feet and is God over all, blessed 
forever. 

Our examination of this world-old problem has not led 
us to any complete solution. Such solution is beyond 
human ken. The generations have come and gone and 
gazed at this Sphinx and questioned it, and still it stares 
at us with stony face and unopened lips. But we have 
gained some points of view that may help us to under- 
stand it better, or at least to bear it more patiently and 
hopefully. 

The final word on this subject is faith. When we 
look upon the vast canvas of the universe, we can see 
only infinitesimal portions of it, and these are deeply 
darkened with shadows. Our hearts grow faint at the 
apparently dreadful vision, and we would fain call upon 
God to sweep the shadows away and flood the scene 
with golden light. But the Infinite Artist, seeing the 
whole picture in time and in eternity, lets the shadows 
lie upon it and pronounces everything beautiful in its 
time. And we must bow before his judgment as being 
true and righteous altogether. Only thus can we acquire 
and rest and rejoice in 

that blessed mood, 
In which the burthen of mystery, 
In which the heavy and the weary weight 
Of all this unintelligible world, 
Is lightened. 



\ APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 280 

4. Idealism and Religion 

Philosophy must furnish the necessary foundation for 
religion and theology. It gives shape and strength to 
religion and breathes into it vitality and warmth, or it 
cuts off its roots and devitalizes and stifles it. The 
soundest basis and most genial atmosphere for religion 
are found in idealism. It finds its home and breathes 
its native air in a world that is a spiritual system. 

(i) The basal foundations of religion are affinity, de- 
pendence and fellowship of human spirits in their relation 
to the Father of Spirits ; and these are laid down in the 
world as a spiritual organism. The human spirit is of 
the same fundamental nature or stuff as the divine 
Spirit, derives its being from itand is dependent upon it at 
every point. The way is thus open between God and 
man for " spirit with spirit to speak," and all.the capacities 
of the human soul are so many needs and yearnings for 
fellowship with the Father. This mutual fellowship is 
made intimate through the reciprocal immanence of 
the divine and the human. God holds all souls in him- 
self so that he is in them and they are in him, and this 
makes them sensitive to his presence and quick to catch 
the accent of his voice and the breathing of his Spirit. 
In such a spiritual system prayer is as natural and 
necessary as communication between father and children, 
or between friend and friend ; and inspiration is as 
natural as the quickening touch which one mind can 
give to another. God is not far off, but nigh us, even 



290 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

in our heart ; and this idealistic fact is the foundation 
of all religion. 

The purely dynamic theory of the world views it as a 
fire, burning to an ash-heap, in which spirit is only a 
fine flame ; as a machine, running down never to go 
again, in which consciousness is only a cog. This view 
makes short work, not only with theology, but also with 
ethics, psychology, and history, by reducing them to 
physics, and raises over the entire universe the dread 
spectre of fatalism and final extinction. A sure escape 
from this fire and ash-heap is the view that sees the 
world as a spiritual system in which energy is will, sub- 
tance is soul, ultimate reality is personality, and God is 
all in all. 

(2) We cannot go far in religion without encountering 
the supernatural. Almost all worthy religion in the 
world has or claims supernatural elements in its origin 
and operation, and this fact shows that such elements 
go down to its roots and are among its constituent fibers. 
Idealism furnishes the best soil for this element. Dual- 
ism is especially embarrassed at this point, and much 
of the difficulty in connection with the supernatural in 
religion, breeding doubt and skepticism, has been due 
to a mechanical dualistic philosophy. According to 
dualism, the world of matter and nature lies external to 
God and man as a huge mass or machine that goes on 
under laws which, although originally impressed upon 
it by God, are self-operative and invariable. This vir- 
tually separates God from his world, so that the only 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 



291 



way he can adapt it to special purposes is to thrust his 
hand into it and violently arrest or divert its action, A 
miracle thus becomes " a violation of the laws of nature." 
It was such a view of the world that enabled Hume to 
deliver a telling blow against miracles, a blow and wound 
from which this mechanical view of the supernatural has 
not recovered to this day. Hume said that such an event 
as a violation of the laws of nature was so unnatural and 
improbable that no amount of human testimony could 
overthrow the presumption against it ; and on the dual- 
istic view of the world this argument still has force. 

But idealism has cut the ground from under Hume's 
argument. When we view the world as a spiritual sys- 
tem, nature vanishes as an external machine with fixed 
laws, and becomes the internal constitution and operation 
of God's own life. God holds the world in solution in 
himself, and all its elements and activities are but the 
working of his thought and feeling and will. " Natural 
law in the spiritual world " expresses a relation just the 
reverse of the truth: " Spiritual law in the natural world " 
is the true relation. The laws of nature, that seem so 
fixed and unalterable to us, are only God's mental habits, 
or ordinary ways of working. But he can change a 
habit and adapt it to a special purpose. Even we can 
adapt our habitual action to unusual circumstances with- 
out violating any law of nature or of our own world ; 
and what we can do, often imperfectly, God can do with 
infinite ease and perfection. The Creator has not tied 
himself up to or exhausted himself in his creation. He 



292 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

is yet free to do anything he may please to do, and all 
his infinite resources are still at his bidding. There are 
yet in him inexhaustible possibilities, which will pour 
forth from him through all eternity. 

Now what we call a miracle is simply a special act of 
God for a special purpose. The same wisdom and will 
that ordinarily work in the grooves of divine habit for a 
moment move in an unaccustomed path in order to reach 
an unaccustomed end. But no law of his being has been 
violated ; he has only put forth an extraordinary activity 
for an extraordinary purpose, and what is supernatural 
to us is still natural to him. Even we can work miracles, 
in a degree, for this is what we do when we vary a 
habitual course of action so as to divert or adapt it to a 
special need. A man might walk every business day of 
the year from his house to his office along a certain street 
at a certain hour until this habit would seem to an on- 
looker as a fixed law of his life. Yet some morning, in 
order to meet a special emergency, such as visiting a sick 
friend, he might go round by another street or at another 
hour, and such unusual action would seem to the onlooker 
as a violation of the law of his life, and might be considered 
as a wonder or miracle. The business man, however, 
would by such action be violating no law, but would 
only be adapting his habit to a special purpose. So God 
ordinarily fulfills his purposes in his ordinary ways, or 
what we call the laws of nature ; but when an extraor- 
dinary need arises in his plan, he varies his action to 
meet it ; and in such variation he is violating no law of 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 



293 



his world, but is only suiting his action to a special 
end. This principle affords natural and easy and abun- 
dant room for answer to prayer, providence, revela- 
tion and inspiration, incarnation and resurrection, and 
for all such special acts as God may see fit to employ 
in his communication with and ministry to his human 
children. 

(3) Christianity is based upon the spiritual order of 
the world. The Bible is saturated with idealism. It 
does not view the world as a lumpish, dead mass pro- 
jected out of God and lying between him and us, but 
views it as the immediate presence and power of God. 
" By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and 
all the host of them by the breath of his mouth " : that 
is, by the utterance of his thought and will expressing 
itself in a deed. He said, " Let there be light, and there 
was light." " He spake, and it was done : he com- 
manded, and it stood fast " : with him thought and deed 
were one. The Hebrew thinkers and poets saw God's 
immediate presence in nature. The heavens declare 
his glory, and fire and hail, snow and vapor and 
stormy wind fulfill his word. There is no escaping his 
presence, and though we were to take the wings of the 
morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 
even there shall his hand hold us. The world is thus 
viewed as the manifestation of his thought and as a 
spiritual order. The Bible is an Oriental book, and 
thinks and speaks the language of idealism. The Ori- 
ent is the home of such modes of thought and systems 



294 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

of philosophy, and its greatest Book is the highest and 
finest product of ideahstic faith and worship. 

The fundamental doctrines of Christianity are idealis- 
tic. God himself is a pure Spirit, and this is the foun- 
dation fact of the world as a spiritual system. Human 
beings are also spirits, the offspring of God, and this 
fact fills out the idealistic scheme. The reciprocal im- 
manence of God and man is set forth in Scripture. 
Christ gave the very formula of such mutual imma- 
nence in saying, " As thou art in me, and I in thee, that 
they also may be in us." " Abide in me, and I in you." 
Paul elaborated the doctrine that Christ is in Christians, 
and Christians in Christ; and he summed up the whole 
system of idealism in his profound saying, " In him we 
live, and move, and have our being." 

The process of salvation through the Incarnation and 
Atonement is especially illuminated by an idealistic in- 
terpretation. The Incarnation is a special exhibition of 
the supernatural, or a further and fuller manifestation 
of the divine nature. God incarnates himself, as we 
have seen, in successive degrees, from the lowest point 
on the scale of material forms up to man. The ether is 
the deepest and most primal level of the divine mani- 
festation we can reach, the germ of being to which God 
has imparted the least degree of inner life. From this 
lowest level evolution passes through atom, molecule, 
crystal, vegetable, and animal up to full-blown con- 
sciousness, freedom, and responsibility in man, the point 
where the process passes into personality and the human 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 295 

soul becomes psychologically distinct from God. At 
each of these successive higher stages God breathes in 
more of his life, and thus he differentiates or incarnates 
himself in this vast unfolding series, reaching from ether 
to man ; and yet in and through this process he keeps 
his own personality distinct at every point. 

This scheme logically supplies a place for a further 
step and higher manifestation, Man has attained the 
image of God, but is yet an imperfect image : why not one 
step more, reaching the summit and undimmed splendor 
of the divine in the form of the human ? This supreme 
summit has been attained in Christ, who is the full reve- 
lation of God, " the brightness of his glory and the ex- 
press image of his person." God, having incarnated 
himself in successive stages from the lowest mechanical 
energy in ether up to full spiritual life in man, at last 
took upon himself human flesh and spirit, or manifested 
himself in his own Person under this form. Then a 
new hour struck in the history of his world and of our 
world. As a critical point was reached and passed when 
the lower evolution culminated in man, so a still higher 
critical point was reached when Christ appeared as the 
Son of Man and Son of God. The Incarnation was thus 
an outburst of the life of God, filling the human world 
with his glory, as the heavens are lighted up when a 
new star blazes into being, or as the morning dawns 
with the rising sun. 

Reverting to our illustration in which the infinite 
series infolds the contained series (page 207), we see 



296 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

that Christ in his human nature is one of the contained 
series, and by virtue of this relation he touches man at 
every point ; and in his divine nature he also, at every 
point, touches God. He is, in fact, in himself a double 
series. Son of Man and Son of God, so that on the one 
side he is identical in nature with man, and on the other 
identical with God. This fact constitutes him the Me- 
diator between God and man. Sin has disrupted the 
moral and spiritual union and fellowship of man with 
God, and thus driven a cleft into our world and turned 
its harmony into infinite tragedy. Only a mediator who 
is identified with both of the disrupted series can grasp 
their sundered threads and reknit them together. 
Christ, whose double nature is woven of both human 
and divine threads, is the Mediator who can lace and 
heal this wound. As the Son of Man he is the Teacher 
who is the Light of the world, whom men can follow and 
not walk in darkness, and the perfect Pattern after 
whom they can rebuild their shattered lives. 

But it is as the supreme Sacrifice that Christ does 
his deepest work in redemption. The principle of 
vicarious sacrifice, that runs as a scarlet thread through 
the whole web of the universe, is dipped in its deepest 
dye in the blood of his Cross, and there becomes the 
Sacrifice that taketh away the sin of the world. By 
virtue of his union with and immanence in sinful 
humanity, he is so identified with it as to be implicated 
in and, in a sense, responsible for its guilt, and bears 
and atones for it in his infinite grief and suffering ; and 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 297 

by virtue of his union with and immanence in God he 
experiences and expresses the Father's sorrow over 
human sin. His Cross, ineffably deep and mysterious 
to us, is thus an atonement that draws together the 
sundered lives of God and man and binds and seals 
them in eternal fellowship. 

(4) Christian theology in the hands of the early 
Fathers, such as Augustine, and of many of its greatest 
theologians, such as John Calvin and Jonathan Edwards, 
was based on idealistic philosophy. But in modern 
times it has drifted away from this foundation and out 
of its native air to a dualistic basis and into an uncon- 
genial atmosphere that have involved it in grave diffi- 
culties. By thrusting an opaque world between God 
and man it has, in a measure, screened God off from 
us and made him seem remote and inaccessible, whereas 
the Bible and the old theologians bring God near and 
make him vital and warm to us, our very breath and 
life. Theology is necessarily conservative, but it is now 
responding to the great idealistic movement that set in 
with Descartes and Kant and is being quickened in this 
more genial air. Skepticism, that found such a vulner- 
able part in the dualism that had been incorporated in 
theology, is being met with a more sohd front and 
matched with keener weapons. All the doctrines of 
Christian theology are being restated in the light of 
monistic philosophy, and they are more deeply and ra- 
tionally grounded, cohere in a stronger system, and are 
enhanced in power as integral parts of the spiritual world- 



298 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

order.^ Our whole modern thinking is being permeated 
and molded by the idea of the divine immanence, and 
this is the root of idealism. 

5. Idealism and Life 

*' By their fruits ye shall know them " : to this test 
must all theories of being and life, God and man, come. 
Philosophy cannot hide in a secret chamber of specula- 
tion, but must come out into the open and be seen and 
known of men. No one can hold his philosophy in an 
isolated cell in his brain or heart, for it will ramify and 
pervade his whole life. How does idealism affect our 
practical thoughts and deeds .'' What fruits grow out of 
this soil } 

It must be confessed that in its impersonal and panthe- 
istic forms its fruits are not good. The idealism of India 
obhterates personality and all moral distinctions, and 
merges the soul in the universal sea of unconscious fate. 
Such a philosophy is destructive of the worth of the soul 
and cheapens life, brands consciousness as a curse which 
is to be steeped in oblivion as soon as possible and by 

^ Many of the leading theologians in America and Europe are now 
idealistic in their underlying philosophy. A notable instance of this is 
President Augustus H. Strong's " Systematic Theology," recently com- 
pleted in three volumes. In his volume entitled " Christ in Creation and 
Ethical Monism," page 47, President Strong says : " I believe that the 
tendency towards monism in physical and metaphysical science, in biology 
and psychology, in literature and theology, shows that the monistic theory 
meets a great want of our time. . . . Prolonged examination of the Bible 
leads me to believe that monism is itself the Scripture doctrine, implicitly 
if not explicitly taught, not only by John but by Paul, and I therefore 
provisionally accept it." 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 299 

any means, turns religion into "organized weariness," 
and tends to sink character and conduct in sensuality. 
But the personal monism which is the philosophy of the 
Occident stands at the opposite pole from the impersonal 
monism of the Orient and bears different fruit. Its 
corner stone is personality, which is the essential con- 
stitution of spirit, the universal and only reality. It thus 
puts supreme emphasis on the personality of God and 
of man and raises the whole universe to this high level. 
The world is a social organism of persons in which God 
is the original and central Self, and other beings are 
derived and dependent selves. 

Idealism tends to promote the highest ideals and 
attainments. Its doctrine of the soul as reality in itself 
emphasizes its supreme worth. The human spirit is one 
of the realities of this world, and not a phenomenal 
appearance or subjective dream ; and the same reality 
assures to it permanent worth and crowns it with immor- 
tality. The emphasis idealism puts on personality also 
enhances the worth and power of the soul. The ideal- 
istic view of the will as the creative energy of the soul 
working in a world of spirit akin to itself is of great value 
in the field of character and conduct. It erects the soul 
into a kingdom armed with sovereign power to maintain 
itself and extend its borders. It sets it in a spiritual 
world which is more or less pliant and plastic to its 
touch. No barriers of foreign and inflexible material 
environ and bind it, but it moves in a world of spirit 
which is its homeland and in which it has freedom and 



300 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

power. In a measure it creates the ideas and ideals 
which are its objects, and re-creates and projects the world 
in which it lives. The human soul thus in a large degree 
plans and builds its subjective life and masters and molds 
its objective world. This enormously increases its re- 
sponsibility and spurs it on to the highest ends. Its 
greatest achievement is building its own character into 
a system of permanent ideals and habits constructed 
of truth and trust, righteousness and reverence, honesty 
and honor, purity and patience and peace, goodness and 
gentleness and love, kindness and courtesy, sympathy 
and service and sacrifice, prayer and aspiration and obedi- 
ence. These are the highest attainments and noblest 
victories of life, the jewels that outshine all external 
crowns and kingdoms, compared with which mere wealth 
and fashion and worldly power are only tinsel baubles. 
Idealism also turns the world into a social organism or 
brotherhood of spirits in which all inherit family rights 
and privileges. But this world-family has been ruptured 
and scattered by human evil, and now lies in more or less 
discordant and warring fragments. The social organ- 
ism is sown with strife and stained with blood. Ideal- 
ism teaches every man to see a soul of the same ulti- 
mate reality as his own in every other man, to accord 
him the same rights and to serve him in sympathy and 
love. It works out into all the social sciences, such as 
economics, politics, sociology, ethics, and religion. It 
dreams of building all the dissevered members of 
humanity into a grand brotherhood which will be the 



APPLICATIONS OF IDEALISM 30I 

Kingdom of God on earth ; and this is its ultimate goal 
in this world and its strenuous endeavor. 

In a final word, idealism tends to lift all life into the 
spiritual and divine. It turns the whole universe into 
spirit, alive with the immanence of God, everywhere 
aflame with his presence and manifesting his thought 
and feeling and will. " Earth's crammed with heaven, 
and every common bush afire with God." From this 
point of view we see the world saturated with God and 
we breathe his breath. Land and sea and sky are 
just his thoughts spread out before us, the beauty that 
everywhere paints and soaks through the world is his 
rich emotion, and all its energies are his will in action. 
The laws of the world are the laws of God's own life 
streaming through us and knitting us up into the same 
organism or bundle of life with himself. When we 
touch the world we touch God, and when the world 
touches us, we are touched by God's own hand. There 
is no escaping his presence, for we are environed in him 
and immersed in his life. We may say with Wordsworth, 
the idealistic poet of nature : — 

And I have felt 
A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man : 
A motion and a spirit, that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things. 



302 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

This presence is not a fateful Power, ominous and 
sinister, but may be discerned as a kindly Face, a Father's 
care and love. 

In proportion as we realize this divine immanence 
shall we see the world ablaze with God and be able to 
live in the light of his face. We shall then know that 
all things are the expressions of his wisdom and will and 
are working together for our good. Our life will merge 
in his life in fellowship and obedience, love and joy. 
The flesh will melt into the spirit, and we shall live in 
the spirit. The world will dissolve into the splendor of 
God, and in his light we shall see light. 



APPENDIX 

A BRIEF COURSE OF SUGGESTED READING 

The following brief course of reading is suggested for 
those who may wish further to pursue the general sub- 
ject of metaphysics, especially along idealistic lines. 
Only a few of the more important books can be men- 
tioned and their nature indicated. 

I. Of the many general histories of philosophy, one 
of the best for unprofessional readers is " The Persistent 
Problems of Philosophy," by Miss Mary Whiton Calkins, 
Professor of Philosophy in Wellesley College (New 
York: The Macmillan Company. ^2.50). It covers the 
whole field of modern philosophy, beginning with Des- 
cartes, clearly classifies the various systems, and gives a 
sketch of each leading philosopher, with an account and 
a criticism of his system. It abounds in brief, aptly 
chosen quotations that let these thinkers speak for 
themselves. The book is remarkably clear in thought 
and style, and makes philosophy about as easy and at- 
tractive as its nature will allow. Although it is written 
from an idealistic point of view, yet it is impartial in its 
presentation of all systems. It is an admirable intro- 
duction to the general field of metaphysics, and will 

303 



304 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

prepare the reader for a more detailed study of the sub- 
ject, 

2. One of the foundation books of modern idealism 
is "The Principles of Human Knowledge," by Bishop 
George Berkeley (1685-1753), of which a good edition is 
that edited by Professor Charles P. Krauth, with extensive 
and valuable notes. He first clearly enunciated the 
fundamental principle of idealism and wrought it out 
into a system, although in an elementary and crude 
form. His brief book is singularly clear and easy read- 
ing, and the unprofessional reader will have little diffi- 
culty in following his course of reasoning. 

3. Any one wishing to go to the roots of modern 
metaphysics will need to get some acquaintance with 
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), although his name has 
become a traditional terror because of the supposed 
depth and difficulty of his speculations. There are pro- 
found deeps and dense fogs in his writings, but even 
the general reader can do something with them and will 
be repaid for the effort. Kant is an ideahst in that he 
holds that space and time and all the "categories" are 
subjective forms which the mind imposes on its own 
states. But in his chief work, " The Critique of Pure 
Reason " (translated by F. Max Miiller, The Macmillan 
Company), he is agnostic as to the nature of ultimate 
reality because he holds that both mind and matter are 
phenomena that manifest an unknowable reality, or 
thing-in-itself, which underlies both ; in which funda- 
mental point he was followed by Herbert Spencer. Yet 



APPENDIX 305 

Kant, in his " Critique of Practical Reason," on the ground 
of moral necessity, reaches a spiritual ultimate reality in 
God and the human soul. This divisive cleft in his sys- 
tem is his greatest inconsistency and weakness. Kant 
is often obscure in his reasoning, and even his disciples 
find contradictions in him, but he has left his impress 
on all our thinking, and it is a mental discipline to come 
into even superficial contact with him. If one does not 
care to attack his works directly, he can get a good idea 
of his teaching from Friedrich Paulsen's " Immanuel 
Kant: His Life and Doctrine" (translated by J. E. 
Creighton and Albert Lefevre. New York : Charles 
Scribner's Sons. $2.). Paulsen is an admirable inter- 
preter of Kant, and gives his readers a good idea of the 
system of the great German thinker. 

4. Next after Kant the general reader will do well to 
take up Schopenhauer's " The World as Will and Idea " 
(translated by R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp. London : 
Kegan Paul, Trench, Truber, and Co.). Schopenhauer 
( 1 788-1 860) had a luminous but erratic mind, which is 
mirrored in his books. They are ill-balanced and pessi- 
mistic, but brilliant and fascinating. He wrote philoso- 
phy as literature, and filled it with the many-hued colors 
of life as he applied it to all aspects and interests of the 
world. The chief contribution he made to philosophy 
is his central doctrine that we know the world subjec- 
tively as will and idea, and objectively as matter in space 
and time. He thus made the soul a piece of reality in 
itself, renouncing Kant's doctrine that we do not know 



3o6 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

the ontological soul, but only its phenomenal manifesta- 
tion. Schopenhauer makes knowledge of the self the 
corner stone of his system, and this remains as one of 
the fundamental grounds of modern thinking. 

5. The next great thinker to be noted is Hermann 
Lotze (18 1 7-188 1 ), who wrote voluminously on philo- 
sophical subjects, and whose " Metaphysics " is one of 
the deepest and most difificult of modern philosophical 
works. But his monumental work is his " Microcosmus " 
(translated by Miss Elizabeth Hamilton and Miss E. E. 
Constance Jones, and published in a massive volume of 
1464 pages by Charles Scribner's Sons. $6.). This is 
one of the great philosophical books of the last century, 
and is a mine from which later metaphysicians have dug 
much valuable ore. It is divided into nine Books, of 
which the subjects in their order are : The Body, The 
Soul, Life, Man, Mind, The Course of Human Life, 
History, Progress, and The Unity of Things. It will 
be seen that the work thus covers the whole field of 
thought, and is a philosophy of the universe. It is 
idealistic in its principles and conclusions and is a 
wonderfully rich storehouse of truth and suggestion. 
Lotze was a poet by nature as well as a philosopher, 
and many passages in his "Microcosmus" are marked 
with grandeur and beauty. It takes long and patient 
plodding to go through this big book, and sometimes 
the reader wades through obscurities or travels over 
deserts ; but he will also find many garden spots and 
sublime mountain views, and will be richly repaid. 



APPENDIX 307 

6. A noted German metaphysician who has only 
recently died is Friedrich Paulsen (i 846-1 908), whose 
work, "An Introduction to Philosophy" (translated by 
Frank Thilly, New York : Henry Holt and Company. 
1^2.50), is of the first importance to the general reader. 
This is not a book about philosophy, but it is philosophy. 
Paulsen works out his own system of thought from 
foundation to turret in the most thorough and finished 
manner. His thought and style are transparently lucid, 
and he is always understandable. He is as readable and 
interesting as William James, and for a German this is 
saying much. Paulsen is a thoroughgoing idealist, and 
if the general reader is limited to one book, this is the 
one for him to read. 

7. Books by living authors are increasingly numerous, 
as metaphysics is reviving in popular interest and is now 
having its day. Professor Josiah Royce, of Harvard 
University, is one of the foremost American metaphysi- 
cians, and his " The World and the Individual " (The 
Macmillan Company, two volumes. ^4) is one of the most 
imposing metaphysical structures yet reared in this coun- 
try. It is idealism carried to the very verge of pantheism, 
yet, he maintains, it escapes this pit. It is a strong 
piece of reasoning, subtle and eloquent. A more popular 
book is his" The Spirit of Modern Philosophy " (Boston : 
Houghton, Mifflin Company. $2.50), which treats many 
of the problems and applications of philosophy from 
the idealistic point of view. 

8. Professor William James, the colleague of Pro- 



3o8 THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

fessor Royce in Harvard University, has set sail on 
the sea of metaphysics in "A Pluralistic Universe" 
(New York: Longmans, Green, and Company. ^1.50), 
an immensely interesting book, as all his writings 
are. While Professor James differs at many points 
from Professor Royce, and generally disclaims ideal- 
ism, yet he arrives at a view of ultimate reality that is 
idealistic. 

, 9. Professor Borden P. Bowne, of Boston University, 
is a leading American philosophical thinker and teacher, 
and his books are marked by brilliant epigrams and 
flashes of wit. His " Metaphysics" (New York : Harper 
and Brothers. ^1.75) is a formal statement of his views, 
and his " Personalism " (Boston : Houghton, Mifflin 
Company. ^1.50) is a more popular presentation. He 
is a thorough idealist, and is one of its most illuminating 
and convincing advocates.^ 

10. Professor Alexander T. Ormond, of Princeton 
University, is a sohd and sane thinker whose" Concepts of 
Philosophy " (New York : The Macmillan Company. 
$4) is a broad and strong working out of idealistic prin- 
ciples, reaching the conclusion that " consciousness is 
the great reality," "revealing in its activity the truth and 
significance of the inner nature of things." His " Basal 
Concepts of Philosophy " (New York : Charles Scribner's 
Sons. ^1.50) is a briefer book which aims to show that 
" a completely rational idea of being can be achieved only 

1 Professor Bowne died, oa April i, 1910, as this book was passing 
through the press. 



APPENDIX 309 

when we . . . translate it into self-conscious personal 
spirit." 

11. A small book of much value is "The Religious 
Conception of the World," by Professor Arthur Kenyon 
Rogers, Professor of Philosophy in Butler College (New 
York: The Macmillan Company. 1^1.50), in which 
idealism is applied in concrete explanation of the world. 

12. A "System of Metaphysics," by George Stuart 
Fullerton, Professor of Philosophy in Columbia Univer- 
sity (New York : The Macmillan Company. $ 4), a 
book far from containing a complete " system," is an 
able presentation of the principles of dualism. 

13. If the reader wishes to bite into a hard piece of 
metaphysics, let him try his intellectual teeth on "Appear- 
ance and Reality," by F. H. Bradley (London : Swan, 
Sonnenschein, and Company). In the First Book, on 
Appearance, the universe is resolved into a mass and 
mist of contradictions, which, in the Second Book, on 
Reality, the author endeavors, but with small success, to 
put together again. The work lands one in a Hegehan 
Absolute, which may be described as "An immense 
solitary specter — it hath no shape, it hath no sound, it 
hath no time, it hath no place. It is, it will be, it is 
never more nor less, nor sad nor glad. It is nothing — 
and the sands fall down in the hour glass, and the hands 
sweep around the dial, and men alone live and strive and 
hate and love and know it." It is a pessimistic book, but 
one feels that it contains profound thinking, and is repaid 
for reading it. 



3IO THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM 

While these few representative books are only a small 
selection out of the vast literature of this subject, yet 
they will give the reader a general view of and a 
good grounding in the systems and principles of meta- 
physics. 



INDEX 



Absolute, the. See God. 

Animals, as symbols of life, 122-123; 
of sensibility, 145-146, 156-157 ; of 
will, 163 ; partial selves, 184, 204, 
206, 223. 

Anthropomorphism, 183. 

Apperception, 96. 

Archimedes, his pou sto by which to 
move the world, 84. 

Art, as expression of feeling, 100, 148. 

Atom, as center of energy, i ; as psy- 
chological conception, 47. 

Atonement, the, ideahstic interpreta- 
tion of, 296-297. 

Augustine, ideahstic in theology, 297. 

Bastian, Dr. H. Charlton, on spontane- 
ous generation of life, 125-126. 

Beauty, in nature as symbol of sensibil- 
ity, 147-150- 

Berkeley, on the reahty of the phe- 
nomenal world, 62-63 ; his idealism, 
215, 217 ; and Mrs. Eddy, 232-233 ; 
his " Principles of Human Knowl- 
edge," 304. 

Bible, the, saturated with idealism, 
293-294. 

Body, the, a unit in the stream of 
phenomena, 115-116; interaction 
between soul and, 54-55, 116-117, 
226-233 ; ideahstic definition of, 
116; relation to God and the soul, 
2 10-2 1 1 ; dissolution of in death, 

245-249- 
Bowne, Prof. Borden P., on personahty 

not a hmitation, 192-194 ; his 

works, 308. 
Bradley, Francis H., his "Appearance 

and Reality," 309. 
Browning, Mrs. Ehzabeth Barrett, 

quoted, 301. 



Browning, Robert, quoted, 120, 245, 

247, 252, 271, 275, 285, 286. 
Burke, John B., on "radiobes," 128. 
Burroughs, John, quoted, 261. 

Calkins, Mary Whiton, her "Persistent 
Problems of Philosophy," 303. 

Calvin, John, idealistic in theology, 297. 

Cancer, as an object of interest, 264. 

Categories, the, 92-94, 96. 

CausaHty, a necessity of thought, 10 ; 
how known, 93 ; as basis of universal 
laws, 103 ; in nature, 138 ; and the 
world, 196-204 ; nature of, 196-200. 

Cause, the First. See God. 

Chesterton, Gilbert K., on philosophy, 
225. 

Christ, Jesus, his witness to immortal- 
ity, 254-256; as the Incarnation of 
God, 294-295 ; as Mediator between 
God and man, 295-296 ; as Sacrifice 
for sin, 296-297. 

Christianity. See ReHgion. 

Christian Science, a perverted form of 
idealism, 231-233. 

Conscience, nature of, loi, witness to 
the ethical character of God, 155, 
195 ; checks passion, 278. 

Consciousness, as a stream, 87-89 ; 
has no insensate core, 89-gi. 

Crystals, as possible forms of hfe, 127- 
128; repairing themselves, 140; 
how related to God, 208. 

Darwin, on design in nature, 144 ; his 
utihtarian explanation of beauty in 
flowers, 149-150, on pain in nature, 
158. 

Dastre, A., on life on matter, 128. 

Death, idealistic interpretation of, 
248-249. 



3" 



312 



INDEX 



Descartes, the self his starting-point in 

philosophy, 84, 87, 219. 
Design, the soul works by, 109 ; in 

nature, 139-145. 
Dreams, space world in, 69. 
Drummond, Henry, on the Struggle 

for Others in nature, 158-160. 
Dualism, defined, 16-17 ; not secure 

against solipsism, 112 ; its solution 

of relation of mind and body, 226 ; 

and miracles, 290-293. 

Earthquake, incident in cooling globe, 
265. 

Eddy, Mrs. Mary Baker, her perverted 
idealism, 231-233 ; relation to P. P. 
Quimby, 232 ; to Berkeley, 233. 

Edwards, John Harrington, his "God 
and Music," quoted 152, 153, 154, 155. 

Edwards, Jonathan, idealistic in theol- 
ogy, 297. 

Electrons, i, 26, 198. 

Epictetus, quoted, 275. 

Eternity, with God an eternal Now, 82, 
186. 

Ether, universal medium, i, 26 ; as 
symbol of will of God, 198. 

Evil, the problem of, 256-288; the 
world not all evil, 256 ; transcends our 
power to solve, 257-258 ; diiBculty of 
defining, 258-259 ; in nature, 259- 
262 ; seeming waste in nature, 259- 
262 ; strife and suffering in nature, 
262-263 ; apparent evil, 269-271 ; evil 
out of good, 271-274 ; evil as condi- 
tion of good, 274-277 ; superseded in 
history by good, 278-280 ; as rebel- 
lion of the lower nature against 
the higher, 280-283 ; as sin, 282- 
283 ; why did God permit? 283-285 ; 
attitude of God towards, 285-287 ; 
solution of in next world, 287-288. 

Evolution, illustrated in growth of the 
soul, 106 ; a love story as well as a 
battle in nature, 160 ; in the world, 
17s ; in the thoughts of God, 200- 
201 ; and immortahty, 250-252. 

Experience, the stuff metaphysics 
handles, 7 ; objects of, 95-104. 



Fechner, Gustav, T., his conception of 
immortality, 252-253. 

Ferrier, James T., quoted, 63. 

Fiske, John, on immortality, 238-230. 

Freedom, of the soul, 108-109 ; not 
inconsistent with law, 108, 169-170; 
with habit, 170-172 ; in the world, 
177 ; and heredity, 283 ; and sin, 
283-285. 

FuUerton, Prof. George S., on relation 
of mind to brain, 55 ; his argument 
for externality of space, 59-60 ; his 
"System of Metaphysics," 309. 

God, included in metaphysics, 4 ; com- 
municates with man through space 
images, 71 ; his omnipresence and 
omnipotence, 75 ; his omniscience, 
81-82 ; and the world, 179-223 ; 
the world the phenomenon of, 179- 
181 ; his nature revealed in the 
world, 181-182 ; in man, 183 ; the 
constitution of his mind, 184-185 ; 
of his feeUng, 186-187 ; of his will, 
187; his consciousness, 187-188; 
as First Cause, 188-189; as the 
Absolute, 188-189; as the Infinite, 
189; his personality, 190-194; 
Lotze's view of, 192 ; Bowne's view 
of, 192-193 ; as " suprapersonal " and 
"hyperpersonal," 194; as a Trinity, 
194 ; moral character of as disclosed 
in nature, 194-195 ; in man, 195 ; 
as Cause of the world, 196-204 ; are 
there degrees in his consciousness? 
205-206 ; relation to man, 205-215 ; 
immanent in the world, 209 ; rela- 
tion to human body and soul, 210- 
211 ; his Fatherhood and immortal- 
ity, 243-244 ; the universality of his 
interest in the world, 260-266 ; 
stress in the life of, 267-268 ; why 
did he permit sin? 283-284; his 
attitude towards evil, 285-288 ; and 
religion, 280-290 ; and the super- 
natural, 290-293 ; in practical ideal- 
istic life, 301-302. 

Goethe, quoted, 53 ■ 

Gravitation, as will, 166. 



INDEX 



313 



Habit, nature of, 107-108 ; and free- 
dom of the will, 170-172 ; in the 

world, 176; and God, 202. 
Hamilton, Sir William, his difficulty 

with space, 60. 
Hegel, quoted, 71. 
Hendrick, Burton J., on cancer, 264. 
Henley, W. E., quoted, 108. 
Heredity, good and evi] aspects of, 

281-282 ; apparent injustice of 

282-283. 
History, a progress of good, 278-280. 
Hugo, Victor, on plan in the world, 144 ; 

on tragedies in nature, 263. 
Hume, his objection to miracles, 291 ; 

annulled by idealism, 291. 
Hutchinson, Dr. Woods, on mental 

healing, 229. 
Huxley, on plan in animals, 140-141 ; 

on immortality, 240-241 ; on evil in 

the world, 277. 
Hyperspaces, 76. 

Idealism, defined, 17 ; the name un- 
fortunate, 17; and solipsism, i ri- 
ng ; holds to subjectivity of space, 
49-50 ; of time, 78 ; does not touch 
reality of phenomenal world, 62-63 ; 
summary of, 215-224 ; its proof only 
probable, 222 ; applications of, 225- 
302 ; to relation of mind and body, 
226-231; relation to "Christian 
Science," 231-232 ; to immortality, 
233-256 ; to problem of evil, 256-288 ; 
to religion, 298-301 ; to Christian- 
ity, 293-298 ; to practical hfe, 298- 
302. 

Imagination, constructs space world, 
69 ; creates objects of experience, 
97, 98. _ 

ImmortaUty, 233-256; idealism has 
logical place for, 233-235 ; perma- 
nence of personaUty an argument for, 
23S~239 ; attested by human needs 
and desires, 239-244 ; by incomplete- 
ness of the world, 244-245 ; objection 
to from dependence of soul on body, 
245-249 ; practical value of the hope, 
249-250; evolution and, 250-252; 



idealistic conception of, 252-253 ; 
value of great souls as evidence for, 
253-254 ; value of Christ as evi- 
dence of, 254-256. 

Incarnation, the, idealistic interpreta- 
tion of, 294-295. 

Infinite, the. See God. 

James, Prof. William, his definition of 
metaphysics, 6; his "Pluralistic 
Universe," 308. 

Kant, his argument for subjectivity of 
space, 58-59, 60, 217 ; for subjectivity 
of time, 78; on " things-in-them- 
selves," 87 ; his categories, 93 ; 
his chief works, 304-305. 

Kepler, quoted, 135. 

Law, how laws are framed by us, 101- 
104 ; the soul subject to, 106 ; 
and liberty, 108, 169-170 ; in nature, 
137-139, 175-186; as the habit of 
God, 202 ; and the supernatural, 
290-293. 

Leibnitz, on life in matter, 130. 

Leverrier, calculated position of un- 
known planet, 138. 

Life, the world as, 12 2-13 1 ; in animals, 
122-123; in vegetables, 123-124; 
in inorganic matter, 124-130. 

Lodge, Sir Oliver, on immortality, 
238. 

Lotze, on space, 68 ; on personality, 
192 ; on animals as partial selves, 
204 ; his works, 306. 

Lowell, James Russell, quoted, 287. 

Maeterlinck, Maurice, on plan in the 

plant world, 141-142. 
Man, as the key of the universe, 177- 

178 ; in his relations to God, 205- 

215- 

Martineau, James, on design in the 
world, 145 ; on permanence of per- 
sonality, 236-237 ; on immortality, 
244, 24s ; on imperfections in the 
world, 274. 

Materiahsm, defined, 17, 18. 



314 



INDEX 



Mathematics, illustrates creative power 
of the mind, 72-73, 07 ; hypergeome- 
tries, 75-76 ; mathematical series, 
207, 205-296. 

Matter, relation to metaphysics, 4, 16 ; 
relation to mind, 16-18; inorganic 
matter and life, 1 24-131 ; idealistic 
definition of, 204. 

Meaning, objects of, g8. 

Memory, in sleep, 89 ; objects of, 97. 

Metaphysics, defined, 1-5 ; its methods, 
5-8 ; its assumptions, 8-1 2 ; systems 
of, 15-19- 

Miller, Hugh, on strife in nature, 262. 

Mind, relation to metaphysics, 4, 16 ; 
relation to matter, 16-18; impos- 
sibility of interaction with extended 
matter, 54-55 ; its creative power 
in mathematics, 72-73 ; its nature 
as consciousness, 88-91 ; in rela- 
tion to the body, 226-233. See 
Soul. 

Miracles, possibility of, 203, 290-293. 

Mitchell, Dr. S. Weir, on mental heal- 
ing, 229. 

Monism, defined, 17 ; its three forms, 
17 ; materiahstic, 31 ; idealistic, 31 ; 
agnostic, 32. 

Motion, nature of, 67-68. 

Miiller, Max, on language, 72. 

Music, rooted in nature, 150-154; 
language of feeling, 151 ; mark of 
sensibility in nature, 155. 

Nature. See World. 

Natural selection, as explanation of 
beauty in nature, 150. 

Newcomb, Simon, on plan in the world 
of matter, 142-143. 

Noumenon, distinguished from phe- 
nomenon, 44-45. 

Objects, of experience, 95-104 ; of 
sense perception, 95 ; of memory, 97 ; 
of imagination, 97 ; of meaning, 98 ; 
of will, 99 ; of feeling, 100 ; general- 
ized objects, 102. 

Omar Khayyam, quoted, 257. 

Omnipotence, 75. 



Omnipresence, 75. 
Omniscience, 81-82. 
Ormond, Prof. A. T., on space, 74-75 ; 
his works, 308. 

Pain, as warning, 271 ; as penalty 
271-272 ; as discipline, 272-274. 

Pantheism, defined, 18 ; of India, 298- 
299. 

Pasteur, M., on spontaneous generation 
of fife, 126; on crystals, 140. 

Paul, his struggle of the higher nature 
with the lower, 281. 

Paulsen, Friedrich, on evil as a condi- 
tion of good, 274-275 ; his works, 
305, 307. 

Peirce, Prof. Benjamin, on ideas in 
nature, 136. 

Persian Dualism, 267. 

Personality, its constitution, 95 ; de- 
limited by control, 1 14 ; not a limita- 
tion, 190-194 ; permanence of, 235- 
237- 

Phenomenon, distinguished from nou- 
menon, 44-45; the world as, 120- 
121, 179-180. 

Poets, intuitive philosophers, 136 ; their 
moral insight into nature, 161 ; 
on immortality, 242. 

Poincare, H., on hypergeometries, 76. 

Pope, Alexander, quoted, 276. 

Powell, Rev. Lyman P., his book on 
Christian Science, 283. 

Prayer, 213, 289, 293. 

Quimby, P. P., teacher of Mrs. Eddy, 
232. 

Reality, unity and harmony of, 11-12 ; 
tendency to believe in one kind of, 
18-19 ; distinction between phenome- 
nal and ontological, 44-45, 64-65 ; 
subjective, 84-87 ; how we reach ob- 
jective, 111-119. 

Rogers, Prof. Arthur Kenyon, his 
" Religious Conception of the World," 
309- 

Rothe, Richard, on evil as the back- 
ground of good, 274, 



INDEX 



315 



Royce, Prof. Josiah, on "time-span," 
80-81 ; his works, 307. 

Schofield, Dr. A. T., on action of the 
mind on the body, 228-229, 230. 

Schopenhauer, his dogmatism, 13 ; 
on the self as reaUty, 87 ; quoted, 
132 ; his "World as Will and Idea," 

305- 

"Science and Health," quoted, 232. 

Sensation, subjectivity of, 36-48 ; 
physical condition of, 37-38 ; physi- 
ological condition of, 38-40 ; psy- 
chological nature of, 40-44; meta- 
physical nature of, 44-48. 

Shakespeare, quoted, 32. 

Slavery, an outgrown institution, 280. 

Smyth, Newman, quoted, 150 ; on 
moral element in nature, 1 60-1 61. 

Solipsism, explained, j; 1 1 ; and refuted, 
1 1 2-1 19. 

Soul, the, immediately known to us, 
55-56 ; as subjective reality, 84-1 10 ; 
its knowledge of itself, 85-87, what 
is? 89-91; its fundamental faculties, 
92-95 ; its regulative principles or 
categories, 92-93, its thought power, 
92-93 ; its power of feeling, 94 ; 
its will power, 94 ; as a workshop for 
constructing objects of experience, 
104 ; a unit, 105 ; its growth, 105 ; 
subject to law, 106-107 .' to habit, 
107-108 ; telelogical in nature, 109 ; 
interaction with body, 11 6-1 17 ; rela- 
tion to God, 205-215 ; immortahty 
of, 233-256. 

Space, subjectivity of, 49-77 ; explained, 
50-52 ; analogous to subjectivity of 
sensation, 52 ; cannot be transmitted 
through the senses, 53-52 ; a state of 
mind, 53-54 ; Kant's argument for, 
58-59 ; difficulties of ontological, 
6o-6r ; objections to subjectivity of, 
61 ; in dreams and imagination, 69 ; 
the use of the space intuition in ex- 
pressing thought, 72-74 ; and liberty, 
75 ; Prof. Ormond's view of, 74-75 ; 
hyperspaces, 76; Berkeley's dis- 
covery of, 217. 



Spencer, Herbert, on unknowable ulti- 
mate reality, 87, 304 ; soul not ma- 
terial, 239. 

Spontaneous generation, recent views 
on, 125-127. 

Strong, President A. H., adopts the 
name "ethical monism," his idealistic 
theology, 298. 

Subjectivity. See Sensation, and Time. 

Suffering, amomit in nature exaggerated, 
157-158, 263 ; its discipline, 272-273 ; 
religion roots itself in, 273. 

Temptation, as discipline, 273. 

Tennyson, quoted, 84, 242, 244, 267, 
275-276. 

Theology, its field, 2, 3; idealistic, 
297-298. 

Time, subjectivity of, 78-83 ; Kant's 
view of, 78 ; inherent in mental 
states, 79 ; not a fixed rate of flow, 
79-80; the "time-span," 80-83; 
Prof. Royce's view of, 83. 

Trinity, the, 194. 

Tuke, Dr. Daniel Hack, on mental heal- 
ing, 229. 

Tyndall, on life in matter, 125, 130. 

Vaughn, Henry, quoted, 186. 
Volition, its nature, 99. 

Wallace, Alfred Russel, on pain in 
nature, 157-158. 

Will, executive faculty of the soul, 
94 ; objects of, 99 ; freedom of, 
108-109 ; exhibited in the world, 
162-167 ; activity directed to ends, 
166-167 ; freedom of will in nature, 
168-192 ; freedom of and law, 169- 
170; and habit, 170-172; and 
heredity, 283. 

Wordsworth, quoted, 100, 161, 272, 
288, 301. 

World, the "plain man's," 21-25, the 
scientist's, 25-29 ; the metaphysi- 
cian's, 29-33 ; as phenomenon, 120- 
121 ; as mind in man, 121-122 ; as 
life, 122-131 ; as thought, 131-139; 
marked with purpose, 139-145 ; as 



3i6 



INDEX 



World — Continued. 

sensibility, 145-162 ; ethical sensi- 
bility in, 155-162 ; benevolence in, 
156 ; strife and pain in, 157-158 ; 
as will, 162-173 ; general characters 
of, 173-177; its unity, 173-174; 
subject to growth, 174 ; to law, 175- 
176; to habit, 176-177 ; interpreted 
by man, 177-178 ; as a great soul, 
178; the world and God, 179-223; 
symbolizes the divine consciousness, 
200-203 ; as objective to God, 
203-204 ; immanent in God, 209 ; 



problem of evil in, 256-289 ; seeming 
waste in, 259-262 ; strife and suffering 
in, 262-269 ; appreciation of depends 
on width of interest in, 263-265 ; 
the developing Hfe of God, 266-267 '> 
as part of larger system, 268-269 ; 
apparent evils in, 269-270 ; progress 
of good in, 298-280 ; sin in, 282-285 ; 
moving towards final triumph, 287 ; 
good in God's sight, 288. 

Young, Thomas, on interference of 
Ught, 138. 



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TO SOME PROBLEMS OF MODERN SOCIAL LIFE 

Cloth, i2mo, $i.§0 

The Religion of an Educated Man 

RELIGION AS EDUCATION — CHRIST'S MESSAGE TO THE SCHOLAR 
— KNOWLEDGE AND SERVICE 

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The Approach to the Social Question 

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By the Rev. WALTER RAUSCHENBUSCH 

Professor of Church History in Rochester Theological Seminary 

Christianity and the Social Crisis 

Cloth, i2mo, $1.50 net 

Mr. Ray Stannard Baker writes in the American Magazine : 
"One of the questions I have asked most diligently as I have gone 
about among the more progressive religious leaders of the country 
is this : 

" ' What recent book, or what man, has given you the most light? ' 
" By all odds the book most frequently mentioned was ' Christianity 
and the Social Crisis,' by Water Rauschenbusch. No recent reli- 
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both church and secular journals, or a wider reading among reli- 
' gious leaders, than this." 



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By carl HILTY 

Professor in the University of Bern, Switzerland 

Happiness Cloth, i2mo, $1.25 ne\ 

" The author makes his appeal not to discussion but to life." — 
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The Steps of Life 

Further Essays on Happiness Cloth, l2mo, $i.2j net 

At rare intervals a man will appear to whom it is given to see 
more deeply into life than his fellows. Such a man Carl Hilty is. 

By NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS 

The Quest of Happiness cioth, i2mo, $1.50 net 

" The volume teems with readable sentences, stimulating thought, 
quotable maxims, and apt quotations. The Christian spirit per- 
vades the pages." — Philadelphia Public Ledger, 

By R. J. CAMPBELL 

Minister of the City Temple, London 

The New Theology cioth, 8vo, $1.50 net 

An outline of what one man in a London pulpit is doing towards 
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and historical criticism. 

By W. H. p. FAUNCE 

President of Brown University 

The Educational Ideal in the Ministry 

Cloth, i2mo, $1.25 net 
"With a largeness of vision and soundness of advice that are 
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York Observer. 

By henry S. NASH 

Ethics and Revelation Cloth, izmo, $1.50 net 

"This is a great book. It is a poem in prose, a study in English. 
. . . Every word of the six lectures should be read by thoughtful 
men of the day, ministers and laymen, believers and sceptics." — 
John H. Vincent. 

The Atoning Life cioth, i2mo, $1.00 net 

" A small book but a great one, in which deep and patient study 
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two or three readings to absorb its fulness." — Outlook. 

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By Dr. LYMAN ABBOTT 

The Great Companion cioth, i2mo, $i.oo 

" In nothing that Dr. Abbott has ever published does his singularly 
lucid and felicitous power of statement appear to better advantage than 
here." — Chicago Evening Post. 



The Other Room 



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"The beautiful faith expressed in this little volume cannot but uplift 
every Christian that reads it, whether he be Baptist, Catholic, Presby- 
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The Temple cioth, i2mo, $i.2j net 

" Dr. Abbott can always be depended upon to write something at once 
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his work with a double appeal, an appeal to the heart on the one hand, 
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By ROBERT M. WENLEY 

Modern Thought and the Crisis in Belief 

Cloth, i2mo, $ijo net 

A clear, compact, and reverent statement of precisely what conclusions 
have been reached in the application of scientific methods of research 
into the text of the Bible, the history of Biblical times, and the bases of 
Christian rehgion. 

By the Rt. Rev. CHARLES D. WILLIAMS 

A Valid Christianity for To-day 

Cloth, i2mo, $1.50 net 

A welcome book to the man interested in bringing the church into liv- 
ing relations with the manifold life of the present age ; a satisfactory 
book for the practical man who judges the vitahty of the Christianity of 
to-day by its fruits rather than its roots. 

By Dr. ARTHUR S. HOYT 

The Preacher : His Person, Message, and Method 

By the author of "The Work of Preaching" 

Cloth, i2mo, $/.jo net 

"Admirable in its matter and its style. Beginning as it does with ' The 
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Method.' . . . Much of Professor Hoyt's charm comes from the fine 
language in which he clothes his thoughts, free from everything gro- 
tesque, affected, or coarse." — The Interior, 



PUBLISHED BY 

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H 149 82 If 



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